Date Available

12-7-2011

Year of Publication

2007

Document Type

Thesis

College

Engineering

Department

Computer Science

First Advisor

M. Pinar Mengüç

Abstract

Nano-scale machining, or Nanomachining is a hybrid process in which the total thermal energy necessary to remove atoms from a work-piece surface is applied from external sources. In the current study, the total thermal energy necessary to remove atoms from a work-piece surface is applied from two sources: (1) localized energy from a laser beam focused to a micron-scale spot to preheat the work-piece, and (2) a high-precision electron-beam emitted from the tips of carbon nano-tubes to remove material via evaporation/sublimation. Macro-to-nano scale heat transfer models are discussed for understanding their capability to capture and its application to predict the transient heat transfer mechanism required for nano-machining. In this case, thermal transport mechanism during nano-scale machining involves both phonons (lattice vibrations) and electrons; it is modeled using a parabolic two-step (PTS) model, which accounts for the time lag between these energy carriers. A numerical algorithm is developed for the solution of the PTS model based on explicit and implicit finite-difference methods. Since numerical solution for simulation of nanomachining involves high computational cost in terms of wall clock time consumed, performance comparison over a wide range of numerical techniques has been done to devise an efficient numerical solution procedure. Gauss-Seidel (GS), successive over relaxation (SOR), conjugate gradient (CG), d -form Douglas-Gunn time splitting, and other methods have been used to compare the computational cost involved in these methods. Use of the Douglas-Gunn time splitting in the solution of 3D time-dependent heat transport equations appears to be optimal especially as problem size (number of spatial grid points and/or required number of time steps) becomes large. Parallel computing is implemented to further reduce the wall clock time required for the complete simulation of nanomachining process. Domain decomposition with inter-processor communication using Message Passing Interface (MPI) libraries is adapted for parallel computing. Performance tuning has been implemented for efficient parallelization by overlapping communication with computation. Numerical solution for laser source and electron-beam source with different Gaussian distribution are presented. Performance of the parallel code is tested on four distinct computer cluster architecture. Results obtained for laser source agree well with available experimental data in the literature. The results for electron-beam source are self-consistent; nevertheless, they need to be validated experimentally.

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