Implementation and evaluation of the Level Set method: towards efficient and accurate simulation of wet etching for microengineering applications

The use of atomistic methods, such as the Continuous Cellular Automaton (CCA), is currently regarded as a computationally efficient and experimentally accurate approach for the simulation of anisotropic etching of various substrates in the manufacture of Micro-electro-mechanical Systems (MEMS). However, when the features of the chemical process are modified, a time-consuming calibration process needs to be used to transform the new macroscopic etch rates into a corresponding set of atomistic rates. Furthermore, changing the substrate requires a labor-intensive effort to reclassify most atomistic neighborhoods. In this context, the Level Set (LS) method provides an alternative approach where the macroscopic forces affecting the front evolution are directly applied at the discrete level, thus avoiding the need for reclassification and/or calibration. Correspondingly, we present a fully-operational Sparse Field Method (SFM) implementation of the LS approach, discussing in detail the algorithm and providing a thorough characterization of the computational cost and simulation accuracy, including a comparison to the performance by the most recent CCA model. We conclude that the SFM implementation achieves similar accuracy as the CCA method with less fluctuations in the etch front and requiring roughly 4 times less memory. Although SFM can be up to 2 times slower than CCA for the simulation of anisotropic etchants, it can also be up to 10 times faster than CCA for isotropic etchants. In addition, we present a parallel, GPU-based implementation (gSFM) and compare it to an optimized, multicore CPU version (cSFM), demonstrating that the SFM algorithm can be successfully parallelized and the simulation times consequently reduced, while keeping the accuracy of the simulations. Although modern multicore CPUs provide an acceptable option, the massively parallel architecture of modern GPUs is more suitable, as reflected by computational times for gSFM up to 7.4 times faster than for cSFM. (c) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. This work has been supported by the Spanish FPI-MICINN BES-2011-045940 grant and the Ramon y Cajal Fellowship Program by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation. Also, we acknowledge support by the JAE-Doc grant from the Junta para la Ampliacion de Estudios program co-funded by FSE and the Professor Partnership Program by NVIDIA Corporation.Montoliu Álvaro, C.; Ferrando Jódar, N.; Gosalvez, MÁ.; Cerdá Boluda, J.; Colom Palero, RJ. (2013). Implementation and evaluation of the Level Set method: towards efficient and accurate simulation of wet etching for microengineering applications. Computer Physics Communications. 184(10):2299-2309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpc.2013.05.016S229923091841

Crucial Physical Dependencies of the Core-Collapse Supernova Mechanism

We explore with self-consistent 2D F{\sc{ornax}} simulations the dependence of the outcome of collapse on many-body corrections to neutrino-nucleon cross sections, the nucleon-nucleon bremsstrahlung rate, electron capture on heavy nuclei, pre-collapse seed perturbations, and inelastic neutrino-electron and neutrino-nucleon scattering. Importantly, proximity to criticality amplifies the role of even small changes in the neutrino-matter couplings, and such changes can together add to produce outsized effects. When close to the critical condition the cumulative result of a few small effects (including seeds) that individually have only modest consequence can convert an anemic into a robust explosion, or even a dud into a blast. Such sensitivity is not seen in one dimension and may explain the apparent heterogeneity in the outcomes of detailed simulations performed internationally. A natural conclusion is that the different groups collectively are closer to a realistic understanding of the mechanism of core-collapse supernovae than might have seemed apparent.Comment: 25 pages; 10 figure

Visualization of fracture progression in peridynamics

We present a novel approach for the visualization of fracture processes in peridynamics simulations. In peridynamics simulation, materials are represented by material points linked with bonds, providing complex fracture behavior. Our approach first extracts the cracks from each time step by means of height ridge extraction. To avoid deterioration of the structures, we propose an approach to extract ridges from these data without resampling. The extracted crack geometries are then combined into a spatiotemporal structure, with special focus on temporal coherence and robustness. We then show how this structure can be used for various visualization approaches to reveal fracture dynamics, with a focus on physical mechanisms. We evaluate our approach and demonstrate its utility by means of different data sets

Do sudden cardiac death rates warrant earlier treatment following myocardial infarction? experience from the VALIANT Trial

Purpose: Patients with left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) ≤30% following myocardial infarction (MI) are at greater risk for sudden cardiac death (SCD). Current guidelines recommend implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) placement in patients with EF ≤30% beyond 30 days post-MI. We determined the incidence and timing of SCD in a high-risk MI population. Methods: The VALsartan In Acute myocardial iNfarcTion (VALIANT) trial enrolled 14,703 patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD), heart failure (HF), or both following MI (median 4.9 days post-MI, mean age 64.8 years, 31% women, mean EF 35.3%). SCD was defined as unexpected out-of-hospital death by a central committee. Results: EF was recorded in 11,338 patients. A total of 925 patients experienced SCD during the study. Of these, 634 occurred in the first year and 131 occurred within 30 days. Among patients with EF ≤30% (n = 2468), 335 had SCD in year 1 with 74 occurring ≤30 days. Of 5830 patients with EF 30–40%, 213 had SCD in year 1 with 38 occurring ≤30 days. Of 3040 patients with EF >40%, only 84 had SCD in the first year (Figure). Conclusions: More than half of the patients who had SCD post-MI had an EF <30%. In patients meeting current LVEF criteria for ICD, 22% had sudden death within 30 days of MI, suggesting a role for earlier implantation of ICD after MI.[figure1