Electromagnetics and Acoustics Group

The Electromagnetics and Acoustics Group (EAG) focuses on advancing computational methods that enable simulation-based analysis, understanding, design, and optimization of systems that rely on electromagnetic, acoustic, and elestodynamic physical phenomena.

The group pursues the development of:

• fundamental mathematical methods for solving the pertinent partial differential equations, including fully automatic hp-adaptive finite- and boundary-element methods, discontinuous Petrov-Galerkin methods, FFT-accelerated frequency- and time-domain integral-equation methods, and physics-based low-rank approximation methods
• algorithms that increase parallel efficiency and scalability of these methods, including message-passing, shared-memory, and hybrid parallelization techniques
• specialized software implementations of these methods that capitalize on leading-edge supercomputers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center
• high-fidelity computational models, including the AustinMan and AustinWoman human body models
• benchmark suites, including the Austin bioelectromagnetics and RCS benchmark suites

The group is particularly interested in using modern and future computers to accurately, efficiently, and rapidly solve complex radiation, wave propagation, absorption, and scattering problems. A diverse set of natural phenomena and engineering problems benefit from and motivate the group's efforts, including:

• interaction of electromagnetic and acoustic waves with the human body
• design of antennas for complex operational environments
• understanding electromagnetic propagation in forests
• simulation of electromagnetic and sonic logging tools
• analysis of unwanted noise in streamers
• computation of radar cross sections of objects with sharp edges, vertices, and complex materials
• electromagnetic design of electronic packages
• prediction of side-channel vulnerabilities of cryptographic chips
• modeling of insulators in high density electric motors
• modeling of optical fibers and amplifiers
• non-Newtonian fluids in context of modeling cardiovascular systems
• compressible flows and ductile to brittle phase transitions