Blog COMSOL

User Perspectives | Posted on April 24th, 2013 by Wolfgang Joppich

This week we have the honor of having Professor Wolfgang Joppich as a guest blogger. As you may know, COMSOL Multiphysics provides great default solvers for all applications. For the interested user, it is good to know that you can optionally tune or completely change the solver settings. We strongly recommend that you read this blog posting to get an experts’ perspective on the solver technologies offered by COMSOL.

I am an avid reader of the COMSOL Blog and an expert on the topic of solvers and multigrid methods. Therefore, when I read the “On Solvers” blog posts on multigrid methods and the v-cycle multigrid a while back, I felt compelled to respond. While I strongly agree with what is mentioned in the posts, the topic must be explored further.

Read more on: On Solvers: Benefits and Limits of Solution Methods

Electrical | Posted on April 23rd, 2013 by Bjorn Sjodin

Optical fibers are used to transmit information in the form of light through an optical waveguide made of glass fibers. The light is sent in a series of pulses that can be translated as binary code, allowing the transfer of information through the fiber. Because such pulses can travel with less attenuation and are immune to electromagnetic disturbances, fibers are used instead of traditional metallic wires thus allowing data transmission over longer distances and at higher bandwidths.

Read more on: Step-Index Fiber Simulation

Heat Transfer | Posted on April 22nd, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck

Chemical reaction fluids can be cooled using glass flanges. The reaction fluid is passed through the flange and the air surrounding the flange then serves as the coolant. Engineers looking to optimize the cooling performance of such flanges can look to simulation for help.

Read more on: Cooling Flange Performance Analysis

Mechanical | Posted on April 19th, 2013 by Andrew Griesmer

I will always remember a Geotechnical Engineering class I took during the pursuit of my Civil Engineering degree. It contained both the high and low points for that academic semester; the lab portion was a lot of fun, learning about (read: playing with) the different soils and clays existing in the state of Georgia. The final project, on the other hand, tasked us with designing a retaining wall to match certain specifications — a tough and lengthy assignment. A retaining wall is used to hold back soil from a region you don’t want it to move to, such as a lower level of the ground. If excavating close to a retaining wall, you’re subjecting it to additional forces it was not originally designed for, and it may require subsequent support. How much easier it could have been had we only known about geomechanics simulation software.

Read more on: Digging into COMSOL’s Geomechanics Module

Electrochemical | Posted on April 18th, 2013 by Phil Kinnane

It’s always been hard to place the field of electrochemistry into a more traditional engineering field. Departments and institutions that focus on electrochemical applications can be found within the faculties of Chemical Engineering, Physics, Materials Science, Physical Chemistry, and even Civil Engineering and Electrical Engineering. I believe this is because electrochemistry is heavily involved in applications that are quite varied — and in some ways quite new. Electrochemical applications need to be studied before they can be understood and optimized, but doing this experimentally doesn’t give all the answers.

Read more on: Why Model Electrochemical Applications?

Conference | Posted on April 17th, 2013 by Lauren Sansone

If you’re the type of person who appreciates structure and ease-of-use, then as a COMSOL Conference 2013 registrant you will love the My Conference tool. This year we have revamped the system to let you quickly customize your conference program. Now you have the opportunity to add and edit your conference minicourse program whenever you prefer. We have also improved the functionality for presenters to edit and upload their abstracts and papers or posters, as well as get updates on the status of their presentation.

Read more on: How to Prepare for the COMSOL Conference 2013

Fluid | Posted on April 16th, 2013 by Bjorn Sjodin

Vacuum is naturally associated with the hostile environment of deep space. To achieve such an environment in an artificial setting here on Earth is a very challenging task, and it turns out one cannot even come close to the low pressures of an interstellar vacuum. It is at these low pressures that molecular flow occurs.

Read more on: What is Molecular Flow?

Mechanical | Posted on April 15th, 2013 by Vineet Dravid

The dynamic analysis of interconnected bodies or links is called a multibody analysis. These bodies are connected by joints that constrain their relative motion. The simplest element of a multibody system is a single particle, which can be considered using Newton’s laws of motion. Multibody Dynamics has a long and storied background.

Read more on: Multibody Dynamics

Acoustics | Posted on April 12th, 2013 by Bethany Moatts

When given the choice, we’d all prefer our loudspeakers to project perfect sound; having a phone conversation with someone who sounds like a robot caught in a windstorm is less than ideal. The quality of the sound is, naturally, dependent on how well the speaker is designed, and COMSOL Multiphysics is the perfect tool to simulate and optimize loudspeaker designs because of its easy-to-use multiphysics nature. For a loudspeaker analysis to be accurate, you must be able to simulate from signal to sound with all the linking steps in between that determine how what you want to hear is transferred into what you actually will hear from a particular loudspeaker. Each step in the process will be interrelated, so it’s important to use this integrated multiphysics approach to capture each of these complex relationships. In the video at the bottom of this blog post, I will show you how our software can be used to perform a loudspeaker analysis.

Read more on: Calling All Audiophiles: Loudspeaker Analysis Video

Fluid | Posted on April 11th, 2013 by Jennifer Segui

If you enjoy ketchup with your food, there’s a good chance you’ve experienced what we’ll call here the all-or-nothing ketchup quandary. You know, that moment when you reach for a new glass bottle of ketchup, remove the cap, and turn the bottle practically upside down — and then nothing happens. Intuitively you shake or tap the bottle, and then suddenly your food is completely coated in ketchup (unless your reflexes are really good, of course). In this blog post we explain the all-or-nothing effect of pouring ketchup, with a simulation of “ketchup flow from a bottle”.

Read more on: Non-Newtonian Fluids: The Pouring Ketchup Quandary