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Skimboard Hydrodynamics: It’s All in the Boundary Conditions
When it comes to recreational water sports, simulation can make a dramatic difference in performance. Skimboards are a perfect example of this. These short, thin boards are similar to surfboards without fins and they allow riders to float on the water’s surface and glide. In order to improve the design of the board, one group of researchers relied on hydrodynamics to understand the interaction between water and skimboards.
Modeling Flow: Heat Exchanger Microchannels
Plate heat exchangers have a larger surface with respect to their volume as compared to a conventional shell and tube design, making for an efficient temperature regulation device. As the name infers, these types of heat exchangers consist of layers of corrugated metal forming channels in between. In order to optimize their performance, you need the flow through the channels to be well-distributed. As you can imagine, the flow is very detailed and modeling it can be computationally demanding, if […]
Efficient Solar Panel Design Improves the PV Industry
Solar photovoltaic (PV) cells are semiconductor devices that directly convert solar energy into electricity or voltage using the photovoltaic effect. These PV cells are more commonly known as solar cells, or solar panels, and in 2012 they produced roughly 93 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity — enough energy to power over 20 million homes. Because the cells must be directly exposed to the sun’s rays, they are housed outdoors where the panels are affected by the elements. Therefore, the cells must […]
Inertial Focusing, a Counterintuitive Approach to Concentrate Cells
Suppose we have a rectangular microchannel containing a laminar flow with Reynolds number Re = 1. Next, let’s randomly distribute suspended particles at the channel’s inlet. Given that there are no external forces acting on these particles, you would intuitively expect that the particles would trace the fluid streamline. However, scientists from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Veryst Engineering would disagree, and their research findings suggest a completely different pattern than what would be expected. The researchers claim that depending […]
Density-Driven Fluid Flow in Porous Media
There are many different forces that can induce flow in fluids, such as kinetic energy, pressure gradients, concentration gradients, and many more. In natural systems, one effect that can initiate fluid flow in a still fluid is a change in density. This density change will result in a change in the fluid’s buoyancy, thus inciting flow as the denser fluid sinks and the less dense, buoyant, fluid rises. You’re probably most familiar with these changes in density occurring due to […]
Video: 2D Models from Cross Sections of 3D Geometries
A while back, I blogged about a new feature made available in COMSOL Multiphysics 4.3b, the ability to create 2D models from the cross sections of 3D geometries. We are so excited for this new feature that we decided to make a video showing you how easy it is to use.
Molecular Flow Module: Simulate Rarefied Gas Flows in Vacuum Systems
Vacuum technology has many important applications, from semiconductor device and MEMS fabrication, to vacuum coatings for corrosion protection, optical films, and metallization. The new Molecular Flow Module provides vacuum engineers with previously unavailable tools for modeling gas flows within vacuum systems.
Sweep Your Meshes with Ease
Swept meshing is a geometry discretization technique available in COMSOL Multiphysics for specific types of geometries, including thin geometries, geometries with bends, and models with little or no variation in a specific direction. A swept mesh starts at a source boundary and sweeps along to a specified destination boundary. In previous versions of COMSOL Multiphysics, the source and destination boundaries generally needed to be specified by the user. However, in the latest release, COMSOL Multiphysics version 4.3b, the swept mesh […]