Virtual Assembly of Microsystems

摘要

All Phase I research objectives were met or even exceeded. An integrated prototype software application was created based on the theoretical results developed during the course of the project. While using this software environment, members of our team became the first humans to feel the interacting forces between micro and nano scale objects. During the course of the project, it became clear that the computational burden involved in the exact modeling of the relevant physical forces constitutes a major challenge. Clearly, the introduction of more and more powerful computers will continuously extend the realm of solvable problems. Quite naturally, however, the user will always have the desire to take his application to the next level and treat an even more elaborate problem. Several ideas to further speed up the calculation of the physical forces were developed during the Phase I research. These ideas will be further investigated in Phase II and implemented in a production software environment.