Software
The Mirage suite is a coherent family of simulation tools for additive manufacturing. Mirage Optics is the core GPU-accelerated coupled optics engine, while Mirage DLP and Mirage TVAM are process-specific simulation layers built on top of it.
Mirage Optics
Standard ray tracers are not built to couple natively with multi-physics finite element solvers; Mirage Optics is designed to do exactly that. GPU Accelerated Finite Element Ray Tracer. Developed for modelling light transport and absorption through gradient-index and gradient-absorptivity volumetric media. Finite element basis and modular design allows elegant and consistent coupling to multi-physics simulation. Interface effects (reflection, refraction, surface scattering) are modeled as boundary conditions on the 3D mesh. The simulation features a proprietary ASCII ray collection format (.ry), enabling straightforward integration of custom ray generators.
Tech stack: CUDA, Python, Pybind11, toml
Mirage DLP
Vat photopolymerization process simulation of the digital light processing (DLP) technique. Simulation bi-directionally couples ray traced nonlinear optics (Mirage Optics) to an accelerated reaction-diffusion model.
Tech stack: CUDA, Python, Pybind11, toml
Mirage TVAM
Vat photopolymerization process simulation of the tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing (TVAM) technique. Simulation bi-directionally couples ray traced nonlinear optics (Mirage Optics) to an accelerated linear curing model. This coupled light transport has revealed the first numerical demonstration of the well known striation defect in TVAM. Future extension to reaction-diffusion is in the works.
Related publication is under review, software release will be made available after publication
Tech stack: CUDA, Python, Pybind11, toml
DMD projection ray generator
Modular ray generator to model various aspects of digital micromirror array (DMD) projections in Mirage’s proprietary ASCII ray collection format (.ry). DMD can be modeled as: Continuous or pixelated, Flat or gaussian pixel intensity distribution, Focused or collimated beam, anti-aliased or sharp edged.
Tech stack: Python, toml