Certified Consultants | Posted on
May 24th, 2013 by
Kyle Koppenhoefer
This week we are happy to have Kyle Koppenhoefer of AltaSim Technologies as a guest blogger. As COMSOL Certified Consultants, AltaSim can share valuable insights into using the software — today on the topic of meshing wave problems.
As part of our efforts to assist COMSOL users in performing high-quality analysis, we recently used our bi-monthly email to remind users to include twelve degrees of freedom per wavelength when meshing wave problems. This article builds on our previous advice. Wave-type problems develop in a variety of analyses that include acoustics, electromagnetics, and structural vibrations. Thus, this mesh refinement issue touches many different industries.
Read more on: Mesh Refinement for Wave Problems
News | Posted on
May 15th, 2013 by
Lorant Olasz
Starting with the release of COMSOL Multiphysics® 4.3b you can work with multiphysics simulations right from the user interface of the Autodesk® Inventor® CAD system. Called the One Window interface, this functionality is available with LiveLink™ for Inventor®. The result of the work by our external interfaces and integrations development team, the One Window interface, is a completely new environment for simulations that are embedded in the Inventor® user interface. It contains the Model Builder, Settings, and all other views you are familiar with when modeling in the COMSOL Desktop™.
Read more on: Multiphysics Simulations inside the Autodesk® Inventor® User Interface
Tips & Tricks | Posted on
May 9th, 2013 by
Andrew Griesmer
Swept meshing is a geometry discretization technique available in COMSOL Multiphysics for specific types of geometries, including thin geometries, geometries with bends, and models with little or no variation in a specific direction. A swept mesh starts at a source boundary and sweeps along to a specified destination boundary. In previous versions of COMSOL Multiphysics, the source and destination boundaries generally needed to be specified by the user. However, in the latest release, COMSOL Multiphysics version 4.3b, the swept mesh has become more automated, minimizing the number of source and destination boundaries manually defined.
Read more on: Sweep Your Meshes with Ease
Tips & Tricks | Posted on
May 6th, 2013 by
Andrew Griesmer
Our newest release, COMSOL Multiphysics version 4.3b, contains so many new modules and features, certain additions might get lost in the fray. One addition to the COMSOL Multiphysics base package we don’t want you to miss is the ability to create 2D models from cross sections of 3D geometries. This easy-to-use feature allows engineers to simplify the model, gain understanding of and fine-tune parameters, and dramatically reduce simulation time.
Read more on: Creating 2D Models from 3D Geometries in COMSOL Multiphysics
Tips & Tricks | Posted on
April 3rd, 2013 by
Chandan Kumar
Some structural applications involve thin or high aspect ratio structures sandwiched between other relatively low aspect ratio structures. For example, if a piezoelectric transducer is glued on the surface of a mechanical system, the thickness of the adhesive layer is very small in comparison to the two structures it glues together. Numerical modeling of such a thin layer in two or three dimensions requires resolving it with an appropriate finite element mesh. This can result in a large concentration of finite elements near the adhesive layer, leading to high computational cost and time. To avoid this issue, one common assumption many numerical simulations make is to assume perfect bonding between the two structures. By making this assumption, the numerical model ignores the effect of the flexibility of the adhesive layer. This will lead to inaccurate results because the adhesive layer is not infinitely stiff. In this blog post, we will show how to model such thin layers using COMSOL Multiphysics — without the need to draw the layer’s thickness explicitly, while still accounting for the effect of the thin elastic layer. This can lead to a more efficient structural analysis with significant reduction in computational cost and time, without sacrificing the accuracy of the simulation.
Read more on: Structural Analysis with Thin Elastic Layers
Tips & Tricks | Posted on
April 2nd, 2013 by
Walter Frei
A question that comes up occasionally is whether or not you can compute the inductance of a single straight wire. This seemingly simple question actually does not really have an answer, and gives us the opportunity to talk about a very interesting point when solving Maxwell’s equations. Anybody working in the field of computational electromagnetics should have an understanding of this key concept, as it will help you properly set up and interpret models involving magnetic fields.
Read more on: Computing the Inductance of a Straight Wire
Postprocessing | Posted on
March 22nd, 2013 by
Bethany Moatts
Looking for ways to cut down on the time and computer memory required to run your simulation? Does your model exhibit some form of symmetry — axial symmetry, lines or planes of symmetry, or antisymmetry for example? Or perhaps your model exhibits periodicity? If you answered yes to those questions, you’re in luck. You can model symmetry or periodicity in COMSOL Multiphysics easily by either using a 1D or 2D axisymmetric dimensional simulation or by incorporating boundary conditions that represent a symmetry or periodic condition.
Read more on: Advanced Visualization Techniques in Postprocessing
News | Posted on
March 21st, 2013 by
Andrew Griesmer
Online engineering magazines, like Design World and Desktop Engineering, are great for anyone out there interested in emerging technologies. I especially liked a few recent articles: two in Design World’s “CAE Solutions” section and one in Desktop Engineering’s simulation section, detailing a couple of major topics important to finite element analysis, or FEA. First there is meshing, the foundation of FEA software. Second, there is optimization, which is all about maximizing efficiency and improving results. The key for any production company, is an efficient product development process. FEA is a powerful tool to replace a lot of experimentation and prototype manufacturing, and optimization can be used to make virtual prototyping faster, maximizing the effectiveness of the FEA software.
Read more on: Meshing and Optimization in Engineering Magazines
Tips & Tricks | Posted on
March 20th, 2013 by
Walter Frei
There is sometimes a need to include data from other simulation packages into a COMSOL Multiphysics model. There are a variety of ways in which this can be done, but one of the easiest approaches is to read in the point cloud data via a spreadsheet format text file. In this blog post, we walk through the steps of reading in such data, and using it in a COMSOL model.
Read more on: Using Point Cloud Data in Your COMSOL Model
Tips & Tricks | Posted on
March 19th, 2013 by
Bjorn Sjodin
For a transient simulation, imagine if you could simply insert a virtual sensor in a model at a certain location and then monitor the evolution of a field value over time while solving. In COMSOL Multiphysics you can do just that by using Probes. You define a probe in the Model Builder tree right under the Model Definitions node. Measuring the value at a point is not the only thing you can do with probes, but in this blog post we will focus on that specific task of probing. We’ll also show you how you can use probes to compress the size of a saved transient model by only storing the full solution data set at a few points in time and at the same time having a densely sampled probe data plot with an accompanying table.
Read more on: Probing Your Simulation Results
