From Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) to muphyPEEC for Solving Coupled Multiphysics Problems

A tool for unified simultaneous simulation of multiphysics problems based on Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) method is presented. Extension of PEEC method with thermal and mechanical domains is based on circuit interpretation of Finite Difference (FD) and Finite Element Method (FEM) equations. Equations in FEM case are derived by Galerkin's residual method with basis functions of order zero or one. All steps of the process, from geometry description to netlist generation, are done with multiphysics PEEC (muphyPEEC) Toolbox for MATLAB. Solution of the problem is done with LTspice, where timeand frequency-domain simulations can be done. To demonstrate the approach, muphyPEEC is used to model and solve cooling of TO220 transistor mounted on flat plate heat sink and fin heat sink, and results are compared with IR (Infra Red) camera recordings. Electro-thermal microactuator is used as fully coupled problem example, and results are compared with those published elsewhere.