Blog Posts Tagged User Perspectives
Modeling Scar Effects on Electrical Spinal Cord Stimulation
Spinal cord stimulation (SCS) is a treatment for chronic back pain that has been around for over 40 years. It involves implanting electrodes that apply electric potentials directly to the spine, interfering with the human pain signaling circuitry. The body attempts to send pain signals to the brain, but the electrodes act as a barrier preventing the signals from reaching the brain. Although an overall successful method for treating back pain, researchers have been improving on the design since the […]
Fatigue — When Cyclic Stress Produces Fractures
Many of the products that engineers design experience cyclic stresses during use that are below the material’s yield stress; unfortunately, these stresses can still be the primary reason for failure. Thus, engineers and designers must find ways of including the effects of cyclic stresses when designing products for long-term use.
The Stresses Subsea Cables are subjected to
In these days of globalization, keeping the world connected is imperative. Information needs to pass as freely and quickly as possible in order to keep markets up-to-date with the latest news and to ensure that commerce can be conducted without hindrance (at least of the technical kind). So what do you do – look to the sky? The answer is no; in fact, 99% of this information is carried by undersea cables. These unsung heroes sit at the bottom of […]
Piezoelectric Energy Harvester Helps Increase a Car’s Efficiency
Much has been written lately about increasing the energy efficiency of cars. Batteries and fuel cells are very hot topics, and not so long ago I blogged about the University of Michigan’s use of solar cells to fully power a car. Yet, even on the smallest of scales, such as the sensors in your car, improvements are being made. Utilizing a MEMS (Micro Electromechanical System) piezoelectric energy harvester, Alexander Frej and Ingo Kuehne at Siemens Corporate Technology in Munich are […]
Impedance Boundary Conditions Help in Modeling Nondestructive Testing (NDT)
How do you simplify a 3D geometry to reduce the computational resources required to model it? Do it in 2D. What if the phenomenon can only be properly simulated in 3D? Find the planes of symmetry and reduce the size, most engineering objects are symmetric in some way. What if there is no symmetry, such as the propagation of random cracks through a steel pipe? Well, as this story from COMSOL News 2012 shows, there are other methods, such as […]
Lowering Water Levels by not Taking Away the Water
Düsensauginfiltration (DSI) is a novel technique for lowering water levels at mining and construction sites while not actually having to transport the water away from these sites. This came to my attention at the latest COMSOL Conference in Stuttgart. There, Ph.D. student Yulan Jin and Assistant Professor Dr. Ekkehard Holzbecher from the Georg-August University in Göttingen, Germany was presenting their research into this groundwater lowering technique.
Investigating the Fundamentals of an “Old” Technology
Transformers were first commercially used in the late 1800’s, but they are still being investigated at their fundamental levels. One of the stories from our latest COMSOL News concerns ABB (who themselves have been around since the late 1800’s) and their research into these apparatuses.
A Cooling Story for These Sweltering Days
I have just come back from a bit of a vacation and boy was it hot! Here, a large part of the US has been going through record high temperatures and most of my time was spent trying to keep cool. How nice then to mention a story about cooling.