These user success stories will give you an idea of how COMSOL products have been used to solve problems and achieve real competitive advantage. The latest stories can be ordered free-of-charge here.
COMSOL Customer Success Stories
AltaSim Technologies, Columbus, OH, USA
Conventional frequency domain measurements are restricted in their applicability to working on the sea floor. Studies of electric and magnetic field interaction with human tissue have suggested that exposure to continuous electromagnetic fields has a lesser effect than exposure to low-frequency transient fields.
Millipore, Billerica, MA, USA
Designing products for life science research involves coupling of various physics like fluid flow, optics, electromagnetics, acoustics, heat transfer and chemical engineering. The Design Engineering group at Millipore find incredible value in the ability to use COMSOL for exploring these couplings.
Free e-Book explains how new modeling tools are enabling businesses of all sizes to cut costs and boost productivity. In four case studies, leading companies in the biomedical, electronics, oil, and printing industries describe how COMSOL Multiphysics has helped drive their business forward.
Chris Scott, Manager of Design Engineering in the Bioscience Division at Millipore said "COMSOL offers a wide range of solutions in one package, which is highly beneficial for a small group working on a variety of diverse projects. With COMSOL, we learned a single, easy-to-use interface and can now perform CFD, elecromagnetics, and mechanical FEA studies."
AltaSim Technologies, Columbus, OH, USA
Application of simulation tools have allowed designers to reduce cycle time, increase part yield, and optimize the process window for CMC manufacturing. The results of analysis using COMSOL® Multiphysics have allowed AltaSim Technologies to resolve production issues with new designs prior to mass production and significantly reduce the time and cost of new product development and manufacture.
Arcelormittal, France
Researchers at Arcelormittal, France use modeling with COMSOL to better understand the mechanism behind delamination and underpaint corrosion and determine that anodic corrosion arises more in products with good adhesion whereas cathodic corrosion is more important in systems with less adhesion.
Fraunhofer Institute For Solar Energy Systems, Freiburg, Germany
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute For Solar Energy Systems use modeling with COMSOL to compare different polymeric collector geometries and materials for various energy carriers to reach an optimized collector design in terms of efficiency and price. They also confirmed that the design is as efficient as conventional collectors and that the mechanical stability is sufficient if the collector is constructed properly.
GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY
To develop its own high-temperature sodium metal-chloride battery, GE formed a team spanning its Global R&D laboratories, with members in Niskayuna, NY, USA, Shanghai, PRC and Bangalore, India. This team began a close collaboration with the engineers of GE Transportation in Erie, PA, USA. GE’s battery technology has now reached the stage where a full-scale prototype operational locomotive is being shown to potential customers.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The verification that COMSOL Multiphysics is installed and producing the results expected by the developer is the main focus in qualifying COMSOL for nuclear-safety-related procedures. Safety analyst Jim Freels with Oak Ridge National Laboratory reports from their software quality assurance program.
SFX Technologies Ltd.
SFX Technologies Ltd. is using COMSOL Multiphysics to design a new type of loudspeaker driver that uses virtually any surface to produce high-quality sound. In doing so, COMSOL Multiphysics and the Acoustics Module are used to find the optimal assembly of the transducer.
STMicroelectronics, Milan, Italy
A team from STMicroelectronics and Technoprobe, Italy joined together to investigate what happens when a probe tip hits a conductive pad surface. Limiting the induced damage on the restricted surface is one of the most important targets for the Electrical Wafer Sort(EWS) process. The COMSOL model helped determine the areas of peak stress and understand how failures could arise.
Ugitech S.A., Ugine, France
Ugitech S.A., a manufacturer of stainless steel in France, has used COMSOL Multiphysics to optimize running of its continuing casting machines. In their case this means studying various cooling aspects and process speeds for each of the different steel grades the company produces.
University Of Nevada, Las Vegas
UNLV researchers use multiphysics to optimize a solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle. They also demonstrate that COMSOL can be used for smallscale evaluation of flying platforms, such as UAVs, and that it provides an all-inclusive way to approach a design problem and arrive at a development solution quickly.
Waters Corp., Milford, MA, USA
At Waters Corp., people who work in R&D have seen a lot of benefits from doing simulations — from understanding fundamentally what happens to guide design, prototyping, and development. It’s really about fewer prototypes; fewer design variations, which translates to shorter development time; and reduced R&D and manufacturing costs, also resulting in better-informed decisions.
WIDEX A/S
A privately-owned company with a world market share of approximately 10%, Widex launched the world’s first fully digital CIC (completely in the canal) hearing aid in 1997 and in 2006 released the Inteo - the first hearing-aid line with integrated signal processing. Modeling with COMSOL helped gain a better understanding of the acoustics of the ear in general, and how it affects the sound field that a hearing aid can measure.
Witteveen+Bos, Deventer, The Netherlands
A group of consulting engineers used COMSOL Multiphysics® and the Mixture Model application mode at a wastewater treatment plant to determine that simply adding a certain chemical to improve flock (flocculent) was cheaper than making physical modifications to its clarifier tanks. Thus, modeling saved the company 90% of the costs.
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
At the Life Support Systems Development Team, our task is to develop robust, life support systems for long duration space travel, such as lunar exploration missions or a trip to Mars. We are developing the next generation of atmosphere revitalization systems, which will reach for new levels of resource conservation via a high percentage of loop closure.
Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA
Scheduled to launch in the fall of 2009 with the goal of reaching Mars in October 2010, NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic rover that will look for signs of habitable environments on the Red Planet. One of the instruments selected to fly aboard the MSL is the Chemistry and Mineralogy (CheMin) instrument.
AltaSim Technologies, Columbus, OH, USA
The results of fully coupled Fluid-Structure Interaction analyses have allowed AltaSim Technologies to resolve performance issues with new products prior to mass production, significantly reducing the time and cost of new product development and manufacture.
STMicroelectronics
With the scaling down of semiconductor devices, current density in the metal interconnects joining individual transistors increases. Up to now, lifetime models have been based on empirical methods. Thus, an evaluation of potential failure modes is very important as STMicroelectronics brings new advanced technologies onto the market.
ZINK Imaging , Massachusetts, USA
We used multiphysics modeling to model the mechanical and thermal behavior of our direct thermal printing process and to postprocess the data. The mechanical simulation investigated the compressive contact between the platen and the print medium as well as between the medium and print head.
PEM, Siaugues, France
Given the scarcity and price developments of today’s metals, virtually all of them can be counted as being ‘precious’. As a result, electroplating firms such as PEM always look for ways to reduce the amount of metals that are consumed as part of a process.
RocTool, Le Bourget du Lac, France
Mathematical modeling is going far beyond the R&D lab and is starting to make a real difference in manufacturing processes. Today it would be virtually impossible to adapt our process to each client’s requirements without COMSOL Multiphysics.
Jahm Software Inc., MA, USA
It is common to use data at room temperature in a simulation because elevated temperature data could not be found. However, the effects of temperature on a given material property can be quite large and ignoring the temperature effects can lead to erroneous and misleading simulation results.
The Saab Group, Linköping, Sweden
Flexibility was required by the Saab Group who wanted to simulate the striking of airplane wings by lightning, as well as how much the shielding material around a power substation would heat up. This story shows how they could manipulate COMSOL Multiphysics and the underlying equations to do just this.
Royal Philips Electronics NV, Drachten, Netherlands
Behind your clean, close shave there is an enormous amount of high technology, even in electric shavers that have been around for decades. On its next-generation shavers, Philips is starting to use multiphysics modeling to optimize the process used to manufacture the shaving cap that acts as a shell around the rotating cutter.
Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK
Friction Stir Welding (FSW) is an alternate way to joining metals, which also provides stronger welds. Dr. Paul Colegrove reports on the benefits of FSW, and the modeling of this new technology conducted by Airbus. A custom-designed user interface to an FEA model allows engineers to quickly determine a weld´s thermal properties and strength.
MEDRAD's Innovations Group, Indianola, PA
Much of MEDRAD´s research deals with the most efficient yet safest way to deliver diagnostic fluids into a patient´s body. And while fluid dynamics plays a crucial role in such studies, their models sometimes also involve heat transfer, electrostatics, chemical engineering, electromagnetics, and other physics.
NATO Undersea Research Centre in La Spezia, Italy
With the help of multiphysics modeling, a group of researchers at the NATO Undersea Research Centre in La Spezia, Italy, are studying how to use low-frequency echoes to determine what an object is made of. Here, they are required to couple acoustics with the structural properties of such objects, while also considering Lamb waves.
TEL Technology Center, Albany, NY
Semiconductor wafer manufacturing involves a number of processes, ranging in size from nanometers to meters. This, along with coupling the physics of chemical kinetics, EM fields and CFD, makes for one sophisticated model!
TRW Automotive, Barsinghausen, Germany
TRW Automotive Engine Components develops, tests and manufactures components for electromagnetic valve-train systems. To optimize the electromagnets and speed this technology to market, TRW engineers found that simulating the electromagnetic properties of their systems to be very helpful.
SARA, Inc., Cyprus, CA
SARA, Inc. is using COMSOL Multiphysics project to develop an antenna that supports directed transmissions of high-power microwaves (hpms). Such is used in a non-lethal weapon that blows out the defense, vehicle, and communications systems of a national enemies and fleeing criminals.
MKS Instruments, Wilmington, MA
Modeling has become invaluable in MKS Instruments' development of first-class mass-flow controllers for the process industry. They have gained a detailed understanding of the complex gas dynamics in their instruments. With that knowledge they've achieved accuracy that clearly stands out as superior in the industry.
SRON (Netherlands Institute for Space Research), Utrecht, Netherlands
XEUS (The X-Ray Evolving Universe Spectrometer) is a mission being conducted by the European Space Agency with the goal of gaining a better view of the universe and the Big Bang. Time´s earliest black holes and galaxy clusters leave behind signatures in the form of X-rays that we can measure.
Dept. Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA
Wouldn't it be a great service for the diagnosing and treating genetic of diseases if physicians had a disposable instrument for detecting DNA that worked as simply and quickly as today's home-pregnancy tests? This isn´t such a farfetched proposition thanks to advances in microfluidic-based concepts.
Replisaurus Technologies AB, Kista, Sweden
Only through advanced packaging techniques can we take advantage of state-of-the-art microelectronic devices. The flip-chip method has become a cost-effective means of erasing many packaging and thermal issues that could spell disaster for high-density, high-power integrated circuits.
Enablence Technologies Inc., Ottawa, ON, Canada
Required for simulating optical systems is the capacity to handle arbitrary geometries, individual and coupled processes, user-defined governing equations, vector equations, inhomogeneous and anisotropic material properties, complex numbers, freely prescribed boundary and initial conditions and full access to the solvers via a scripting program.
Fleetgaurd (Cummins) Inc., Nashville, TN
With air pollution on the rise and the EPA heading it off with strict regulations, auto manufacturers look to multiphysics modeling to take a serious bite out of engine emissions. Fleetguard brought about a series of major advances when they began optimizing the performance of an electrostatic particle separator through COMSOL simulations.
TransTech Systems, Inc., Schenectady, NY
Ronald W. Gamache is the director of Research and Development with TransTech Systems, Inc. The company offers a wide range of products for asphalt paving and has achieved a worldwide reputation for innovation across various levels of the roadbuilding industry. By using COMSOL they acquired new insights into their sensor technology.
Amsterdam Water Supply (AWS), Amsterdam, Netherlands
Amsterdam Water Supply AWS of the Netherlands produces some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, almost 100 million cubic meters per year in fact. They take the water from the Rhine River and purify it in a 14-step process. COMSOL Multiphysics helps them fine tune what happens during this process.
ASM Assembly Automation Ltd of Hong Kong
Porous air bearings are a critical element of high-precision machinery thanks to their essentially frictionless operation, high speed, and accuracy. Thanks to their use of multiphysics modeling, engineers at ASM essentially eliminated the need for more than one prototype of a new bearing design before going into production.
LSU School of Medicine, Shreveport, LA
The image of a physician performing a bedside diagnosis might not be one that comes to mind when thinking of the typical person performing computational simulations. However, this technology has spread into so many areas and has become so accessible to the practicing scientist and engineer that there´s hardly a "typical" modeler any more.
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
A self-propelled, remote-controlled micro-robot revolutionizes heart surgery via more effective 'peep hole operations' - and the same technology also leads to cheaper flights by reducing the air resistance around an aircraft in half. These widely differing applications may be the result of a basic research project on micro-robots.
COMSOL AB and Catella Generics, Stockholm, Sweden
In this rapidly developing and highly competitive market, the time from idea to prototype has shrunk. Therefore, tools for developing virtual prototypes have become exceptionally important. Optimizing a fuel cell´s performance in combination with its auxiliary equipment and operation of the electric motor requires a lot of mathematical puzzling.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN
"Free" neutrons are hardly free at all when it comes to money - actually, it takes enormously sophisticated equipment to create them, and only a handful of places on earth do it. Who needs free neutrons, anyway? Developers of advanced materials, new biotechniques, and cold fusion make just a few candidates.
UTRC, East Hartford, CT & Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
UTRC brings their vast experience to bear on designing ways to snuff out fires with inert gas. For their work, a single COMSOL file contains a number of different physics models which they connect and control with ODEs. The physics account for the gas discharge, the room pressures, chemical reactions, and heat transfer.
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
Dr. Roger Thunvik and Robinah Kulabako of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm use COMSOL Multiphysics to define just how the water contamination evolves in the densely populated lowlands fringing Kampala, so they can stamp out the problems with low cost remediation schemes.
EPM-Madylam Laboratory, Grenoble, France
Dr. Ernst develops cold crucibles that melt incredibly hot metals and other materials without letting the melt touch the container walls. With these methods he can refine ultra-pure titanium and other materials. His approach combines electric currents, induction, heat transfer, and magnetic levitation.
Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA
Automotive and other vehicular applications place their own special requirements on fuel cells. In designing a cell, many things comes into play: cell potential, the pressure of the gas in the anode and the cathode, relative humidity, and even the dimensions of key elements, among them the membrane and the gas channels.
Riboug Research Centre, Schlumberger, France
Drilling an oil well requires a good knowledge of the subsoil. Electrical imaging provides a fuzzy picture of underground structures, which needs to be improved in order to receive a decent knowledge of the subsoil. Experts at Schlumberger carry out simulations with COMSOL Multiphysics to sharpen the image and analyze the crisp snapshots that result.
Ultra Sonus AB, Öregrund, Sweden
Ultrasound technology is able to produce stronger paper, reduce costs, and provide a global solution to the problem of wastewater. This has all been possible since a growing company, Ultra Sonus, Öregrund, developed a fifty year-old technology that was previously only used at the lab-scale.
