Latest Posts
The Next Generation of Moore’s Law
At the COMSOL Conference in Boston, Lam Research Corporation held a keynote talk about Moore’s law and its role in computational modeling. The keynote touched on how Moore’s law has not only impacted the advancement of simulation tools, but also how the development of these tools have themselves allowed Moore’s law to hold true. The concept was something that interested me, and I know it’s been on the minds of many electrical engineers as well. Case in point, when browsing […]
Load Ramping of Nonlinear Problems
As we saw previously in the blog entry on Solving Nonlinear Static Finite Element Problems, not all nonlinear problems will be solvable via the damped Newton-Raphson method. In particular, choosing an improper initial condition or setting up a problem without a solution will simply cause the nonlinear solver to continue iterating without converging. Here we introduce a more robust approach to solving nonlinear problems.
Why All These Stresses and Strains?
In structural mechanics you will come across a plethora of stress and strain definitions. It may be a Second Piola-Kirchhoff Stress or a Logarithmic Strain. In this blog post we will investigate these quantities, discuss why there is a need for so many variations of stresses and strains, and illuminate the consequences for you as a finite element analyst. The defining tensor expressions and transformations can be found in many textbooks, as well as through some web links at the […]
Coupling Transport and Solid Mechanics Models for Better Puffed Rice
In my work at COMSOL, it’s always interesting to see how broad the field of heat transfer can be. Far from being limited to steel ingots and CPU fans, researchers often use COMSOL Multiphysics to study heat transfer in food manufacturing. One good example of this is the study of thermal and mechanical effects in the production of puffed rice, which was presented at the COMSOL Conference 2013 in Boston.
Solving Nonlinear Static Finite Element Problems
Here, we begin an overview of the algorithms used for solving nonlinear static finite element problems. This information is presented in the context of a very simple 1D finite element problem, and builds upon our previous entry on Solving Linear Static Finite Element Models.
Mersen Simulates Joule Heating in Busbars and Fuses
Joule heating is a fairly standard type of simulation for COMSOL users nowadays. It involves solving for electrical voltage and temperature fields simultaneously with highly temperature-dependent material properties. Controlling Joule heating is very important when designing and manufacturing electrical systems components. The electric protection group at manufacturing company Mersen France used to base their busbar and fuse designs on trial-and-error, but these days they turn to COMSOL Multiphysics.
Street Sign Buckles in the Wind, COMSOL User Takes Home Prize
A broken street sign turned into an online contest at the Dutch university TU Delft earlier this month. The TU Delft Webcare Team challenged their social media fans to determine what wind speed led the sign to buckle over — and the winner happens to be a COMSOL user. Here’s how Rob Eling solved the street sign challenge using COMSOL Multiphysics.
Thermometer Calibration: When Experimentation Falls Short
The International Temperature Scale of 1990 (ITS-90) is the industry calibration standard for measuring temperatures throughout the world. The National Physical Laboratory (NPL) works to establish and maintain the ITS-90 through experiments, most notably, thermometer calibration. To better understand and overcome the shortcomings of the experimental process, Jonathan Pearce, at the UK’s National Physics Laboratory, turned to simulation. His results yielded fascinating results about the microscopic behavior of the liquid-solid interface during the freezing process.