Data Structure¶

All .jcm input files share a common data structure representing a data tree. A data tree consists of nested sections containing key-value lists of primitive parameters. See below for a list of the available primitives.

In the text based .jcm input files a section is represented by a tag (=name) followed by an opening bracket ‘{‘. A section is closed by a closing bracket ‘}’, after declaring primitive parameters and nested subsections.

Note

The following examples are useful to explain the data structure of the .jcm files. At this position it is not necessary to understand what the syntax in the examples means in greater detail.

Example 1:

The material file materials.jcm may contain a section like this:

Material {
  DomainId = 5
  RelPermeability = 1.0
  RelPermittivity = 2.25
}

Here, Material is a section tag. DomainId, RelPermeability and RelPermittivity denote primitive parameters. This section defines an isotropic relative permittivity and an isotropic relative permeability for the domain with id ‘5’.

It should also be possible to define a relative permittivity which is anisotropic and which exhibits a stress-induced birefringence. A declaration of such a material may look like this:

Example 2:

Material {
  DomainId = 5
  RelPermeability = 1.0
  RelPermittivity {
    Constant = [2.25 0.00 0.00
                0.00 2.24 0.00
                0.00 0.00 2.24]
    PhotoElasticCorrection {
      ...
    }
  }
}

The section PhotoElasticCorrection contains further definitions to set the photo-elastic properties of the material. In this example the tag RelPermittivity has now the meaning of a section. The example has three nested sections, Material, RelPermittivity and PhotoElasticCorrection, and shows how input data can be defined in a more complex way.

Each .jcm input file comes with a schema specifying which section and primitive tags are allowed. The schema also defines the value types of the primitive parameters and declares default values. In other words, a valid input must match the underlying schema. For more information see chapter Input Schema.

Once the type of a primitive is known it must be given in an appropriate form.

The following table lists all primitive types, gives a short explanation and shows the corresponding formats:

primitive type	description	format	examples
int	integer number	standard integer number	3
float	real number	standard floating point number	2.1108, 5e9
complex	complex number	Matlab, Python, or C++ style	2.1+1.1i, 2.1+1.1j, (2.1, 1.1)
enum	enumeration	non-quoted string from list given by the schema	`ASCII`
boolean		`yes` or `no`	`yes`
string		doubly quoted string	“GaAs”
file	path to a file or directory	doubly quoted string, use Unix separators ‘/’, relative paths refers to file of definition	“./project_results/fieldbag.jcm” “C:/Programs and Files/JCM”
vector<int>	integer vector	Matlab like, size specified by the schema	[11 12]
vector<float>	float vector	see above	[0:0.5:2.5]
vector<complex>	complex vector	see above	[1 1+0.5i]
matrix<int>	integer matrix	Matlab like, size specified by the schema	[1 0; 0 1]
matrix<float>	float matrix	see above
matrix<complex>	complex matrix	see above
0-Tensor	rank 0 tensor (scalar)	as complex, putting into `[]` brackets allowed	3.1
1-Tensor	rank 1 tensor	complex 3-vector	[3.1, 2, 0]
2-Tensor	rank 2 tensor	complex (3 by 3)-matrix complex scalar (gives isotropic tensor) 3-vector (gives diagonal tensor)	[1.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0]
4-Tensor	rank 4 tensor	vector of size 81	[3, …, 6]
Rotation	rotation matrix	real 3 by 3 rotation, coordinate renaming tag, 2 unit directions (3 by 2 matrix ), Euler angles (1 by 3 vector) (see comment)	X:Z:-Y [90, 30, 0]

Comments:

Coordinate Renaming

A coordinate renaming is a special kind of a rotation matrix which interchanges the Cartesian coordinates without changing the orientation. A coordinate renaming may be given as a tag of the form “<AX>:<AY>:<AZ>”, where <AX>, <AY> and <AZ> are the new labels (“X”, “Y”, “Z”, “-X”, “-Y”, or “-Z”) of the original Cartesian axis. For example X:Z:-Y gives the following rotation matrix:

$\begin{eqnarray*} R & = & \left [ \begin{array}{rrr} 1.0 & 0.0 & 0.0 \\ 0.0 & 0.0 & -1.0 \\ 0.0 & 1.0 & 0.0 \\ \end{array} \right ] \end{eqnarray*}$
Two directions definition
The two directions are interpreted as the columns of a 3 by 2 matrix. A right handed coordinate system is constructed such that
- The Z-axis is rotated onto the first vector.
- The X-axis is rotated onto the second vector.
Both vectors are normalized first.
Euler angles

There are different conventions of defining rotations with Euler angles. Here, we employ the $Z-Y'-Z''$ convention which rotates first around the Z-axis by the angle $\Phi$ , then around the Y’-axis (the Y-axis in the rotated frame) by $\Theta$ and lastly around the $Z''$ axis (Z-axis of the twice rotated frame) by $\Psi$ . The rotation matrix R is thus computed as

$\begin{eqnarray*} R & = & \left ( \begin{array}{ccc} cos(\Phi) & sin(\Phi) & 0 \\ -sin(\Phi) & cos(\Phi) & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \\ \end{array} \right ) \left ( \begin{array}{ccc} \cos(\Theta) & 0 & -\sin(\Theta) \\ 0 & 1 & 0 \\ \sin(\Theta)0 & 0 & \cos(\Theta) \\ \end{array} \right) \left ( \begin{array}{ccc} cos(\Psi) & sin(\Psi) & 0 \\ -sin(\Psi) & cos(\Psi) & 0 \\ 0 & 0 & 1 \\ \end{array} \right ) \end{eqnarray*}$

The angles are entered as a vector $[\Phi, \, \Theta, \, \Psi]$ where the angles are given in degrees.