Latest Posts
IEEE Spectrum’s Insert Cover Story Optimizes Electronics Cooling
The June issue of IEEE Spectrum included an insert focused on Multiphysics Simulation. This included a feature on cooling in hybrid cars, articles about metamaterials, the smart power grid, as well as biomedical applications.
News in Particle Tracing for 4.3
There are many exciting new features in the Particle Tracing Module for COMSOL Multiphysics version 4.3. The secondary particle emission feature is particularly fascinating. “This new option for the Wall Condition allows you to model filter multipliers and multipactors, which were previously very difficult to model”, says Dan Smith, Development Team Leader at COMSOL. A mathematical expression, like a logical expression containing the particle energy for instance, can be used to determine the number of secondary particles to be released. […]
Giving the Power of COMSOL to the Operator
COMSOL News is now available in print and electronically, and you can request your copy of the multiphysics simulation magazine here. One of the great stories concerns a process engineer at Ruukki Metals in Finland, Mika Judin, who not only uses COMSOL to model and optimize his process, but lets the operators use the simulation too.
Report from Well Logging Workshop in Houston
On the 17th of May, 27 engineers and scientists related to the oil and gas industry gathered in Northwest Houston to learn more about COMSOL Multiphysics applications for well logging. This area of research and development is of particular interest to the oil services companies, who make tools that help maximize the output from wells. These tools are highly advanced technological devices. They work by being inserted into a wellbore and detecting how much hydrocarbon (e.g., oil) is in the […]
Heat Transfer: Accounting for the Radiation of the Sun
Knowing the sun’s radiation and thermal effects is very important to designers within the building industry, especially in designing “green” buildings. Heat transfer also plays a vital role in designing outdoor devices in terms of maintaining temperatures in extreme hot or cold environments. To use the words of Nicolas Huc, project leader for the Heat Transfer Module development at COMSOL in France: “it makes a huge difference if you forget to take the sun’s radiation into account.”
The Difficulties with Working with Nanoparticles
When it comes to the design of batteries, we want to maximize charge while minimizing volume and weight. The use of nanoparticles can help achieve these goals. However, as I was just reading in one of my favorite websites, Phys.org, it is very difficult to control the material properties when working with nanostructures.
Are you Ready for the June 5th Venus Transit of the Sun?
“At 5:00 central time, June 5th 2012, Venus will transit the sun. It will not do so again until December 2117. The task at hand is to provide a live webcast of the transit as seen from Tulsa, OK.”
AltaSim Takes on Surface Plasmon Resonance Modeling
We’ve just got another finished article and layout back for COMSOL News and it looks as great as the others, but for different reasons. We usually ask a couple of our partners to write an article for COMSOL News to provide users with some more technical background to modeling. AltaSim Technologies, who are certified consultants and even run courses in COMSOL, have written an article about surface plasmon resonance.
Design Materials to Exhibit Wanted Properties
I’ve just been reading my favorite news service, www.physorg.com, and noticed that cloaking is once again the topic of the day. While we have previously reported on a group out of Duke University, this article mentions a group from Ames Laboratory in Iowa. Similar to the Duke Group, Costas Soukoulis from Ames Laboratory also seems to have been at the forefront of this research.
Therapeutic Heat, Electromagnetic and Electrochemical Treatment
A couple of days ago I blogged about the team at Lahey Clinic who are using COMSOL Multiphysics to model their neuromodulation therapy of patients. In their example, they place electrodes close to the spine and, through electric current, stimulate the area around these electrodes to relieve back pain. The reason why modeling is important for them is because it’s quite difficult to actually access these treatments to measure their effectiveness and possible detriments.
Now There’s Thermal Cloaking
As an avid reader of the physorg.com blog, I was pleasantly surprised to see a figure show up that could only have been made with COMSOL Multiphysics. Reading the article on thermal cloaking, I understood why.
What Is the Nature of Pain?
A second user story for the next COMSOL News is also reaching completion with exciting results (read about the first one here). This is an interesting case as it wasn’t really a group of people traditionally associated with finite element that managed to perform some pretty sophisticated modeling. In fact two of them are medical doctors while the final one has his background in physics.