COMSOL Multiphysics® 3.4 Brings Blazingly Fast Simulations to Engineers and Scientists

Self-contact in the boot seal of a gear stick. The figure shows the total displacement. Multicore processing has made such analyses easy in COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4.

Multiphase flow analysis of droplet breakup in a T-junction. This is used in emulsification processes such as in the production of food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical products

RF heating through the absorbed radiation in human tissue. This multiphysics analysis shows a slice and boundary plot of the SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) value resulting from the radiation emitted by a mobile phone.

BURLINGTON, MA (October 5, 2007) - COMSOL, Inc. announces COMSOL Multiphysics® 3.4, a major release of its industry-leading engineering and scientific software environment for modeling and simulating any physics-based system. New multicore processor support, key to version 3.4, provides engineers and scientists unprecedented performance, solver speed, and accuracy in multiphysics simulations. In addition to applying parallel computing throughout the solution process, COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 introduces new fluid dynamic solver methods for simulating very large problems in chemical engineering, heat transfer, or microfluidics applications and sees significant enhancements throughout its suite of discipline-specific modules for such specialized simulations as chemical engineering, RF, reaction engineering, and structural mechanics. COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 makes its public debut today at the 2007 COMSOL Conference in Boston, where it will be on display through October 6. COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 is available directly from COMSOL, Inc. or from COMSOL distributors worldwide immediately.

Multicore processing slashes time to solution

COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 delivers the utmost in computational speed by leveraging multicore processors and shared-memory parallelism. Every step of the simulation workflow—meshing, assembly, and solving—now executes in parallel. COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 will use the maximum number of cores available on the system, and users have complete control over the number of processors dedicated to their simulations.

COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 provides fully parallelized meshing for assemblies straight out of the box. A new boundary layer meshing feature in version 3.4 enables users to mesh thermal boundary layers, charged double-layers in AC/DC applications, or viscous boundary layers in fluid-flow applications more efficiently, with greater accuracy, and with less memory consumption than previously possible.

A major upgrade to COMSOL Multiphysics’s iterative methods pushes solver performance for fluid dynamics to new heights. For example, new, state-of-the-art Galerkin Least Squares (GLS) stabilization techniques now complement COMSOL’s iterative solvers, enabling engineers and scientists to compute large fluid flow problems with millions of degrees of freedom. A segregated solver with an easy-to-use interface, new in version 3.4, reduces memory consumption significantly when computing large problems, such as fluid-structure interaction (FSI) or wave propagation in thermally deformed structures. When compared to its predecessors, COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 solves fluid-flow problems up to five times faster.

COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 also offers users a new suite of postprocessing tools for computing geometric properties such as volume, area, center of gravity, and moment of inertia. Even simulation results can be presented in exciting new ways with version 3.4’s expanded palette of color scales.

Multiphase flow and free convection in the Chemical Engineering and Heat Transfer Modules

Users of the COMSOL Chemical Engineering and Heat Transfer Modules can now step up their simulations to include variable-density flow and free convection. Engineers will find these new capabilities particularly useful when solving coupled flow and conjugate heat transfer problems commonly encountered in electronic cooling and heat exchanger analyses. For applications such as microfluidics, multi-species convection, and reacting flows, COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 has been enhanced with additional multiphysics modeling interfaces for turbulent and laminar flow with variable densities due to variations in composition.

The Chemical Engineering Module has been improved with a powerful modeling interface for the simulation of multiphase flow. With it, users can now simulate bubbly flows such as in scrubbers, aerators, bioreactors, and food-processing equipment effortlessly. Users can also easily set up mixture models for simulating emulsification, sedimentation, and other separation processes common in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and food-processing industries.

The Heat Transfer Module has been greatly enhanced by the introduction of boundary layer meshing and by improvements to COMSOL’s solver technology. Boundary layer meshing provides engineers and scientists with greater accuracy yet requires fewer elements for simulating electronic cooling, heat exchangers, and heat losses to solid structures in mechanical design. Also new in the Heat Transfer Module is the ability to model 3D surface-to-surface radiation using the memory-saving 2D axisymmetric modeling domain.

Parameter estimation in COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab

Upgrades to the COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab® include a powerful new interface for running nonlinear parameter estimations on multiple sets of experimental data. In addition, it is now possible to select which parameters to estimate and which parameters to keep constant in each estimation run. Outputs now display with confidence intervals and standard deviations.

SPICE import in the AC/DC Module and new lumped ports in the RF Module

Version 3.4 makes it easy to build and run COMSOL models as part of SPICE-based circuit simulations thanks to the AC/DC Module’s new SPICE user interface. Another exciting new feature for electronics, electrical components, geophysics, and electrochemistry applications is small-signal analysis for AC impedance studies. Users can also easily model electric motors and generators through a new interface supporting periodic boundary conditions and sector symmetry. Additionally, a new periodic boundary condition user interface has been introduced in the RF Module along with an improved interface for lumped port boundary conditions, which is ideal for wave propagation in transmission lines and circuit boards.

Fatigue analysis enhances the Structural Mechanics Module

The COMSOL Multiphysics Structural Mechanics Module now lets users predict high- and low-cycle fatigue damage. A suite of functions calculate fatigue damage from inputs made up of loading data and deterministic, stochastic, or even nonproportional material fatigue data.

COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 Highlights

• Parallelized meshing, assembly, and solving on multicore and multiprocessor computers
• Memory-efficient fluid flow solvers for chemical engineering, heat transfer, and microfluidics
• Segregated solver minimizes memory consumption for large multiphysics problems
• Improved postprocessing including geometric properties such as center of gravity
• Easy modeling of electronics cooling and free convection with interfaces for variable-density flow
• Boundary layer meshing for representing boundary layers in fluid flow, heat transfer, and electromagnetics
• Bubbly flow interfaces for modeling of scrubbers, aerators, bioreactors, food processing equipment, and boiling
• Mixture-model two-phase flow interfaces for simulation of emulsification, sedimentation and separation processes as well as fluidized beds
• Nonlinear parameter estimation
• Piezoacoustic multiphysics modeling of microphones, ultrasonic transducers and MEMS devices
• Full-wave 3D RF analysis of printed circuit boards and transmission lines with lumped port boundary conditions
• Fatigue analysis

Availability

COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 runs on Windows, Linux, Solaris, and the Macintosh workstations with a minimum of 1GB of memory. COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4 is available directly from COMSOL and from COMSOL’s global network of distributors immediately. Pricing starts at $7,995 (U.S.).

For more information about COMSOL Multiphysics 3.4, all discipline-specific technology modules, and detailed system requirements, or to sign up for an introductory CD, visit COMSOL Inc. at www.comsol.com.

About the COMSOL product line

COMSOL Multiphysics is the first software environment to provide scientists, engineers, and researchers with integrated, best-in-class technology for modeling, simulating, and discovering any system with both single or multiple physics phenomena. A broad range of discipline-specific modules extends the COMSOL environment for chemical engineering, earth science, electromagnetics, heat transfer, MEMS, and structural mechanics applications. COMSOL also offers the COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab®, which allows users to model reacting systems. 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, COMSOL Multiphysics, COMSOL Reaction Engineering Lab and FEMLAB are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB. MATLAB is a registered trademark of The MathWorks, Inc. Other products or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.