News | Posted on May 3rd, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
We’ve been dropping hints for the past few weeks here on the blog, and the time has finally come when we can officially unveil the release of COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3b. Five new products extend our product suite, and there are plenty of new features to enhance your simulation experience. The latest version of COMSOL Multiphysics is here, and you do not want to miss out on the news.
Heat Transfer | Posted on May 1st, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
Given the title of this blog post you might expect it to be about global warming, and I won’t blame you for it; greenhouse effect has become another popular term used when debating climate change. However, its original and literal meaning refers to a very different process, in particular when it comes to heat retention. Here we will describe the effect of heating up an actual greenhouse and suggest steps for optimizing its design.
Electrical | Posted on April 30th, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
Engineers working with lasers, optical fibers and waveguides, nonlinear optical processes, metamaterials, and other large photonic devices ultimately deal with wave optics. Photonic devices are considered “large” when they are larger than a wavelength of light. In that case, you deal with optics frequencies as opposed to radio frequencies, and the device is not complex enough to justify approximating with rays.
Events | Posted on April 25th, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
Each year in May we host a multiphysics simulation workshop specifically for U.S. government employees. This year’s agenda will provide attendees with an overview of COMSOL Multiphysics, tutorials, a user presentation, and more — all in a setting that allows classified work to be shared among federal employees and contractors only.
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.
News | Posted on April 10th, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
Everyone’s talking about graphene right now. When was the last time a material received this much attention? Sure, other materials have peaked our interest before, but when something breaks into more mainstream news you know it’s going to be a very big deal.
Mechanical | Posted on April 9th, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
We’ve all encountered hinges before; they are frequently used to connect different parts of mechanical assemblies in a way that allows them to move freely relative to one another, in a single degree of freedom. There are several different types of hinges, including everything from barrel hinges to friction hinges, with lots in between. Before incorporating a hinge into a mechanical assembly, you might want to get a sense of how it will hold up by performing a hinge analysis.
Electrical | Posted on April 1st, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
In the world of bearings, there are many different types to choose from. For certain applications, magnetic bearings trump their mechanical counterparts in several regards. In order to understand how the bearing will perform, using a simulation tool to calculate design parameters is a good idea.
Multiphysics | Posted on March 29th, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
Smart materials are able to convert one form of energy to another. These materials can be either solid or fluid, and are typically located within what’s called a smart structure. What makes these materials and structures so “smart”? Let’s find out.
Read more on: Smart Materials Innately Transduce Energy, How Smart
Chemical | Posted on March 15th, 2013 by Fanny Littmarck
The beauty of COMSOL is that it provides a unified modeling platform no matter what type of simulations you are performing. This is almost unique to the CAE market. Recently we showed you how to model chemical reactions using a monolith reactor as our example. First we walked you through solving the reaction kinetics and then involving plug flow, next we created a full-scale 3D model of the reactor. A chemical engineer may feel comfortable using a software optimized for this type of simulation, but what if he or she has to contemplate other properties in the device or process as well? For example, a catalytic converter is an exothermic reactor that sits near the exhaust of a car or truck, and there may be requirements for how long it must survive and function adequately before being replaced. In this final part of our “Modeling Chemical Reactions” blog series we will perform a thermal stress analysis of our converter.
Read more on: Modeling Chemical Reactions: Thermal Stress Analysis
