Parallel Meshing Refinement in Electronics Desktop

Introduction:

Every year Ansys creates multiple updates to the different softwares. Sometimes these updates are quality of life improvements, sometimes fixes to prior bugs and/or errors, and sometimes they are general enhancements to the entire tool. Today we are going to present simulation benchmark information around a new beta feature in 2022 R2 called Parallel Mesh Refinement (PMR). We have created a microstrip differential pair created in HFSS and will be simulating it at multiple lengths in attempt to compare simulation times between using PMR and not using the new feature. Before we begin, we will show you where to find this new feature within the Electronics Desktop.

Where to find beta features:

In the design ribbon shown in figure 1, we can click on general options. This will open a dialog box found in figure 2. Within General go to “Desktop Configuration” and then at the bottom click on “Beta Options.” This will open a beta options selector with all the available beta options. For this blog we will be focusing on PMR only. Checking/Unchecking the box next to PMR will enable/disable it as shown in figure 3.

Figure 1. Finding General Options

Figure 2. General Options

Figure 3. Beta Options Selector

Simulation Setup:

For this simulation we have created a differential microstrip with an FR4 substrate. The conductors are copper, and the geometry is created for a differential impedance of 90-ohm. Figure 4 shows the cross section of the differential microstrip. We are using waveports set at each end of the microstrip with the same ground as reference. For the analysis setup we are using a broadband mesh with default settings, a low frequency of 1 MHz and a high frequency of 20 GHz, and a max delta S of 0.02. Figure 5 depicts the analysis setup used for each run. For the frequency sweep we are using an interpolating sweep with a sweep of 0-20GHz, and a default setting of 0.5% error tolerance. We are varying the length of the microstrip in order to increase the mesh counts and potential time of simulation. Table 1 depicts the different lengths used and figure 6 shows an example of the microstrip at a certain length.

Figure 4. Differential microstrip cross section

Figure 5. Analysis setup.

Table 1. Length of each differential microstrip for each simulation