Address:
COMSOL, Inc.
1 New England Executive Park, Ste 350
Burlington, MA 01803 USA
Phone: +1 781-273-3322
Fax: +1 781-273-6603
Email:

Editor Contact:
Bernt Nilsson, VP of Marketing

Reader Contact:
Bjorn Sjodin, VP of Applications

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Leading Optimization Codes Integrate into Multiphysics and FEA Environments.

BURLINGTON, MA (October 23, 2006)-The Optimization Lab from COMSOL adds best-in-class optimization codes geared at computationally intensive FEA (finite element analysis) and multiphysics problems. With this tool it is now easy to perform the large-scale optimization of problems in areas ranging from traditional engineering disciplines such as structural mechanics and chemical engineering to emerging technologies such as bioengineering and MEMS. This simulation tool includes powerful optimization solvers based on the highly respected and widely used SNOPT and SQOPT codes developed by Philip Gill from the University of California at San Diego along with Walter Murray and Michael Saunders from Stanford University. An additional solver routine automatically chooses the best solver type for the user-specified optimization problem.

Users access the optimization functions through an interactive programming interface. Here they provide a vector of parameters and a set of arbitrary constraints along with a single quantity to optimize. The function describing this quantity can be a simple algebraic expression, any computable function of a group of parameters, or an FEA model of any physics phenomena.

The Optimization Lab includes solvers for the following constrained problems:

• Linear optimization
• Quadratic optimization
• Nonlinear optimization
• Linear least squares
• Nonlinear least squares

It also contains the Nelder-Mead search algorithm for unconstrained nonlinear optimization, which is also well suited to handle non-smooth objective functions.

By using the Optimization Lab together with other members of the COMSOL® product family, engineers and scientists can perform optimization of time- and space-dependent problems based on single-physics and multiphysics applications. The Optimization Lab is also fully integrated with the COMSOL Script™ environment, which provides an open and extensible scripting tool for further technical computing, data analysis, and visualization.

A number of examples detailing different applications for optimization supplement the Optimization Lab. In chemistry, you often do not know the final equilibrium state and composition of a reacting mixture although you do have an overall material balance. By minimizing the mixture´s total free energy of the participating species, you can then find this final composition. Another example examines a gear/shaft assembly that has been fastened through thermal interference. Treating this as an inverse model in the Optimization Lab, it is possible to determine the critical spinning frequency at which the gear and shaft will separate and thus specify safe operating conditions for the assembly. A multiple-parameter fitting example shows how this product is very useful in creating accurate SPICE models of electrical components from experimental data or from sophisticated COMSOL Multiphysics simulations.

Price and Availability

The COMSOL Optimization Lab sells for $895; it runs under COMSOL Script, which sells for $995. Both are available immediately.

About the COMSOL product line

COMSOL Multiphysics is a scientific-software environment for the modeling and simulation of any physics-based system. A particular strength is its ability to account for multiphysics phenomena. Optional modules add discipline-specific tools for chemical engineering, earth science, electromagnetics, heat transfer, MEMS and structural mechanics. Other products include COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab™, which allows users to model reacting systems; and COMSOL Script™, a programming language that works both as a general-purpose scientific computational tool and provides a textual based interface to COMSOL Multiphysics models. The COMSOL products are available for the Windows, Linux, Solaris, and the Macintosh operating systems. Full details about COMSOL Multiphysics and related products are available at www.comsol.com

About the COMSOL Group

COMSOL was founded in 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, and has grown to include offices in the Benelux, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and a US presence with offices in Burlington, MA, Los Angeles, CA, and Palo Alto, CA. Additional information about the company is available at www.comsol.com

COMSOL and FEMLAB are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB. COMSOL Multiphysics, COMSOL Script, and COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab are trademarks of COMSOL AB. Other product or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.