COMSOL announced the release of the latest version of its modeling and simulation software, COMSOL Multiphysics version 6.1. Every aspect of the software’s simulation environment — from the ability to perform multiphysics analyses to the functionality for creating apps — delivers feature additions and workflow enhancements.

“This version provides our users with powerful multiphysics simulation tools in areas of highly competitive R&D, like audio technology and vehicle electrification,” says Bjorn Sjodin, VP of product management at COMSOL. “We have also strengthened the software’s foundation with new capabilities for optimization and the modeling of turbulent flow and mechanical contact.”

Fluid and mechanical simulations
This release brings major upgrades to the fluid flow and mechanical simulation products. The CFD Module now includes high-fidelity turbulent flow with detached eddy simulation (DES). This yields the accuracy of large eddy simulation (LES) with substantially less computational effort. A new and fast method for mechanical contact is included in the Structural Mechanics Module and the MEMS Module. It introduces new functionality for solids, shells, and membranes with full support for self-contacting surfaces. There is a new method for assigning materials to thin structures that makes it easier to analyze gaskets, adhesive layers, and claddings.

Transducer design for audio products
Version 6.1 further expands the software’s capabilities for modeling speakers and microphones in consumer electronics with additional functionality for thermoviscous acoustics. “We have a large and growing community of users among leading developers of audio technology. They use our software to analyze everything from smartphone speakers to earbuds and hearing aids. The functionality in this release completes the Acoustics Module simulation environment for analyzing electrovibroacoustics of microtransducers and microacoustic systems,” says Mads Herring Jensen, acoustics technology manager at COMSOL.

Analysis tools for vehicle electrification
COMSOL continues its commitment to providing powerful simulation tools for engineers working on the electrification of vehicles. When assessing the operational reliability and safety of battery technology, users of the Battery Design Module will enjoy several important additions, including support for setting up thermal runaway propagation models. “I am excited about our new user interface for battery packs,” says Henrik Ekstrom, electrochemistry technology director at COMSOL. “It will be very practical for battery developers interested in charge–discharge dynamics and thermal management simulations.” In the AC/DC Module, new functionality for rapid layout of motor windings and magnet arrays ensures a smooth workflow for electric motor design and analysis.

Additional highlights

• Version control of reports and CAD assemblies in the Model Manager
• Automatic simplification of imported ECAD layouts for faster meshing and solving
• Topology optimization with manufacturing constraints for milling
• Multidimensional interpolation and inverse uncertainty quantification
• Magnetohydrodynamics simulation with a library of liquid metals
• Flowmeter analysis that includes coupled piezoelectric, structural, acoustics, and fluid flow effects
• Simulation of acoustic streaming applications where ultrasound induces fluid motion
• Analysis of fuel cell performance that includes effects of fuel impurities
• Electrostatic discharge (ESD) simulation and prediction of lightning-induced damage to electronic components
• Thermal analysis of satellites in orbit

COMSOL
www.comsol.com/product-download

 

COMSOL, the provider of the COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software, announced the 2022 edition of COMSOL News—its annual magazine that recognizes the work of academic and industry organizations around the world that use multiphysics simulation to drive innovative technological research and development.

Within the magazine, readers will find examples of how simulation enables teams to make more informed design decisions, speed up development, reduce physical testing, and minimize costs. Readers will also gain insight into the COMSOL Multiphysics user experience across a variety of applications and simulation-based product development, design optimization, and research.

This magazine highlights the following topics and organizations:
• A “digital twin” for climate management in an additive manufacturing facility — MTC, U.K.
• Analyzing the ice loss of Greenland’s glaciers — Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany
• Drivetrain components for electric vehicles — Bosch, Germany
• Electric vehicle battery management system design — Exicom Tele-Systems, India
• Removal of micropollutants from wastewater — Eden Tech, France
• RF-induced heating of implanted medical devices in MRI systems — MED Institute, U.S.
• Sand “batteries” to store solar-generated heat — Polar Night Energy, Finland
• Silicon photonic MEMS phase shifters for fiber optic networks — EPFL, Switzerland
• Virtual design and prototyping of subsea cables — Hellenic Cables, Greece

Comsol
www.comsol.com

COMSOL announces a major update to the COMSOL Multiphysics software version 6.0. The update builds out the Model Manager server with a web interface — an asset management system — to make it easier for COMSOL users and nonusers alike to manage models, simulation apps, and supplementary and auxiliary files.

COMSOL Multiphysics: from building models and apps to managing simulation projects
Through two decades of development, COMSOL Multiphysics evolved from a software that solved partial differential equations to one that defines the nature of multiphysics modeling: being able to build models with any combination of physics phenomena via the Model Builder. Thereby, engineers versed in the underlying physics and using software to build models began using COMSOL Multiphysics across technology-driven industries, academia, and research organizations for modeling and simulation. Next, COMSOL introduced the Application Builder and concept of simulation apps to expand the realm of who could access simulation to include those who had not traditionally been able to work with models and simulations.

Today, COMSOL completes the environment for managing modeling and simulation projects for product and process design through the recently introduced Model Manager and the Model Manager server with its accompanying asset management system.

About the Model Manager Server and its Asset Management System
Released in December 2021, the Model Manager allows you to:

–Search through models for particular parameter names and feature strings.
–Track model development through version control with model comparison and merging capabilities.
–Upload, link, and administrate supplementary and auxiliary files to a modeling and simulation or development project.

The Model Manager has now been complemented by the Model Manager server’s asset management system, which is accessible through a web interface. In the asset management system, an asset can be considered as a container for links to your model versions, attached supplementary and auxiliary files, as well as various custom metadata fields. With the asset management system, you can itemize assets through model and app files, adding abstracts, setting permissions, and even include thumbnail images of the model at hand.

“As an extension of the COMSOL Multiphysics® simulation platform, the Model Manager server’s asset management system is useful for administrating and managing your models, apps, and simulations in a corporate network environment set up to your own liking,” says Sr. VP of Sales Phil Kinnane. “This could be project-based, model-based, team-based, or similar, according to how you want your organization to structure and organize such work.”

 

A collaborative environment to cover all elements of an organization
The Model Manager server is a database system that can be managed from either the COMSOL Desktop or a web-based UI. A local installation of any license type of COMSOL Multiphysics with the Model Manager and a local database is usually the initial step for a modeling engineer to acclimatize themselves to how this system can be best used within their organization. From there, full deployment can occur by installing the Model Manager server on a central server. Local installations of COMSOL Multiphysics can connect to the central server with the Model Manager server. “I think organizations will start by moving the tens and hundreds of COMSOL models they have been developing over the years to their asset management systems as a communal model library,” adds Kinnane. “Instead of chasing down the many engineers using the software for different purposes, they can now find and search through those models as a centralized repository instead.”

The full power of the Model Manager Server
COMSOL CTO Ed Fontes describes how the Model Manager server will take an organization’s simulation-driven project to the next level: “The true power of the Model Manager is not only in its ability to manage your simulation data, but in being able to version control and audit your actual model-building process.” He adds, “there are a number of simulation data management systems out there, but COMSOL has focused the Model Manager on the model-building process, such as to easily browse through the model tree of certain models or search for specific features like domain settings, boundary conditions, or study types to revisit, update, or even reuse.”

Internal or external customers may use the database system to keep track and use results from a project. They may also use simulation apps and provide feedback about their measurement and test data by uploading them and reports to the relevant asset. And, of course, contributors on the model development can also add their auxiliary data, such as CAD files and specifications, to the project. “In all,” says Fontes, “the Model Manager server and asset management system truly provide the complete working environment for modeling and simulation projects.”

COMSOL
www.comsol.com

COMSOL, the maker of the COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software, has opened registration for COMSOL Day: Version 6.0, a series of online events held around the world for the computer-aided engineering (CAE) market. Starting on January 27, there will be four events to introduce COMSOL Multiphysics version 6.0 to a global, multiphysics simulation community of innovators and managers in research and product development.

These events showcase how new simulation and collaboration tools introduced with COMSOL® version 6.0 will advance simulation-driven product development. Speakers from COMSOL will present major news and offer a closer look at new functionality in version 6.0, such as the Model Manager, a new simulation data management workspace in COMSOL Multiphysics.

“We are truly excited about the Model Manager,” says Phil Kinnane, senior VP of sales at COMSOL. “It takes us and the CAE industry to the next level in integrating simulation in product development. When mentioning this new tool to some of our experienced, ‘power users’, they immediately recognized how important it will be for their current COMSOL Multiphysics simulation projects.”

Sessions focusing on the Uncertainty Quantification Module will provide an introduction to using sensitivity analysis, reliability analysis, and uncertainty propagation in multiphysics simulations. Software updates for specific application areas are covered in separate, dedicated sessions, such as “Electromagnetics” and “Fluid Flow & Heat Transfer” to name two. Similarly, core functionality news is covered across several dedicated sessions, including “Summary of Major News”, “Geometry and Meshing”, and “Optimization”.

“COMSOL Day attendees have the opportunity to interact with COMSOL engineers during live sessions and ask software developers and support engineers questions directly,” says Lauren Sansone, marketing and events director at COMSOL. “The events bring a live stream of sessions throughout the day, and it is easy for attendees to choose if they want to participate in the entire program from start to finish or only attend specific sessions.”

The COMSOL Day: Version 6.0 event dates are:

January 27 (U.S., 11 a.m. EST)
February 3 (Sweden, 10 a.m. CET)
February 10 (India, 10 a.m. IST)
February 24 (China, 1 p.m. HKT)

Participation from any region at any of the events is welcomed. Please note that the sessions hosted by the COMSOL offices in the U.S., Sweden, and India will be conducted in English, while the event hosted by the office in China will be in Chinese.

These events are open to all, and attendance is free of charge. For program details, click here.

 

 

COMSOL, the leading provider of software solutions for multiphysics modeling has released version 6.0 of the COMSOL Multiphysics software. The release introduces the Model Manager, a new workspace in COMSOL Multiphysics that enables efficient simulation data management and collaboration. Also introduced with version 6.0 is the Uncertainty Quantification Module. This is a new add-on product to COMSOL Multiphysics that uses probabilistic design methods to quantify uncertainty in analyses and predetermined safety margins. Version 6.0 further brings major improvements to the solvers with performance speedup by a factor of 10 in engineering areas such as heat radiation and models subjected to nonlinear structural material behavior. With version 6.0, COMSOL promises to boost the productivity of engineers, their teams, and their enterprises in the areas of product design, process development, and manufacturing.

The Model Manager Provides Structure, Version Control, and Effective Collaboration
The Model Manager is fully integrated in the COMSOL Multiphysics user interface and is designed for simulation data management, version control, tracking changes, and advanced search functionality within models, CAD data, and other related external files. It provides a structured workspace where colleagues and teams can collaborate within their organizations and even with external parties, putting the focus on effective product design and innovation. Efficient data storage that keeps only changes made to previous versions and the easy setup of branches and merging them for parallel model development, also contribute to an organization’s efficient modeling and simulation workflow.

“The Model Manager expands on COMSOL’s cutting-edge multiphysics modeling capabilities and our fast-paced strategy of placing COMSOL Multiphysics as the primary tool for democratizing simulation in the CAE market,” says Svante Littmarck, CEO and president of COMSOL. “We now complement our revolutionary Model Builder and Application Builder, for developing multiphysics models and simulation apps, with the Model Manager for model development and simulation data management. Together, this functionality will facilitate collaboration within engineering groups, across departments and enterprises, and even between countries. This will inevitably lead to better process and manufacturing designs as all competencies of an organization are harnessed effectively.”

To allow full collaboration across enterprises, COMSOL’s floating network license type allows users from anywhere within and outside of the license holder’s organization to access a centralized Model Manager installation. This also includes collaborators across geographical and territorial borders. Additionally, a local Model Manager installation is included with all licenses — even those that are not floating-network based — to provide a platform for building an individual user’s file storage structure, while updating versions and tracking changes of their modeling projects.

Sensitivity and reliability analyses are enhanced through the Uncertainty Quantification Module
While the Model Manager expands COMSOL’s footprint within the world of engineering design and development, the Uncertainty Quantification Module makes it possible to produce more complete, accurate, and useful multiphysics models. Based on probabilistic design methods, users can, with reliability analysis, look at questions such as how manufacturing tolerances affect the intended performance of the final product, to prevent over- and under-designs of devices and processes. Screening and sensitivity analyses reveal which parameters are more important than others, which can be used to efficiently test the validity of basic model assumptions, for example, and uncertainty propagation is used to assign probability distributions to the output quantities of interest.

“A strength of the Uncertainty Quantification Module is that it can be applied to any physical simulation covered by COMSOL Multiphysics,” says Jacob Yström, technology director of numerical analysis at COMSOL. “You are not limited to a certain field or application area, such as structural analysis, but can perform the same types of uncertainty analyses on applications based on acoustics, fluid flow, electromagnetics, and so on, and even when these phenomena are coupled. This makes this product wide-ranging and very powerful.”

COMSOL Multiphysics Version 6.0 improves performance and expands modeling capabilities
COMSOL Multiphysics version 6.0 includes important updates to the software platform and add-on products. This includes performance improvements through speedup and memory consumption by a factor of 10 for certain engineering applications. Feature enhancements include more efficient electromagnetic simulation of PCB designs and a new realm for acoustics modeling: flow-induced noise.

Details about new features and improvements across the entire product suite are available in the COMSOL Multiphysics Version 6.0 Release Highlights.

COMSOL
www.comsol.com

 

 

By Dixita Patel

Recent advances for pacemaker technology include improved electronics and smaller batteries, making the development of leadless cardiac pacemakers (LCPs) possible. An LCP is a self-contained (capsule-like) generator and electrode system that eliminates the need for pocket or transvenous leads that often cause malfunctions. The current LCPs on the market pace at a single location of the heart, but for patients who require more than single-chamber stimulation, a multinode LCP system (Figure 1) can be used. Multinode LCP systems require synchronization between all of the implanted devices to function properly. However, the standard communication techniques used may be unsuitable due to constraints in terms of power consumption and size.

To help make the system and communication more efficient, researchers at MicroPort CRM are using simulation to investigate these design challenges using galvanic intrabody communication (IBC). IBC provides a power-optimized solution to facilitate communication between devices, which in turn helps to synchronize multinode LCP systems.

Intrabody communication transceivers for LCP applications

Intrabody communication (IBC) is a near-field communication method that uses an electrode pair to send an impulse through body tissue to a second electrode pair that receives the signal. This method works with ultralow power, and no additional antennas are needed because the electrodes used for pacing also provide the electric field for the communication.

Mirko Maldari, an electronic engineer at MicroPort CRM, and his team proposed a new methodology to further characterize these types of communication channels. “With IBC, because electrodes are used to communicate [instead of coils and antennas], we can optimize both power consumption and size,” said Maldari.

In their research, an in vivo study was performed using a system that consisted of two capsules that were implanted in the right atrium and right ventricle of a heart shown in Figure 1. Further analyses involved the COMSOL Multiphysics software to measure the attenuation of the channel and estimate how much power is dissipated in the tissue.

Analyzing IBC pathloss with simulation

The team at MicroPort collaborated with Synopsys Inc., an electronic design automation company, using the Synopsys Simpleware software to develop a model of a human torso that would be importable into the COMSOL Multiphysics software (Figure 3). The model is based on a validated human phantom from IT’IS Foundation Zurich; more specifically, the “Duke” model, which represents a 34-year-old male.

The geometrical model was created to include organs, muscles, bones, soft tissue, and cartilage. After importing into COMSOL Multiphysics, an approximated version of the heart chambers was built to distinguish heart muscle from blood. Maldari said: “It was important for my application for these features to be included because they have different electrical properties.” The team then designed two identical LCP capsules in COMSOL Multiphysics to estimate the attenuation levels of the intracardiac channel.

The capsules were studied at two different orientations, both at a channel distance of 9 cm. Simulations were performed with a quasistatic approach using the Electric Currents interface in the AC/DC Module, an add-on product to COMSOL Multiphysics, to calculate the channel attenuation in a frequency range between 40 KHz and 20 MHz. The results in Figure 4 show the positions of the right atrium (RA) capsule of the worst-case scenario (perpendicular) and the best-case scenario (parallel). The best-case scenario shows a higher differential voltage across the receiving dipole. The attenuation levels of both scenarios can be seen in Figure 5, where the difference is ~11 dB. From 40 kHz to 20 MHz, the attenuation decreases by ~5 dB for both cases. From the results, Maldari and his team were able to verify that relative position and orientation of the capsules strongly impacts the channel attenuation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For MicroPort, it was important to estimate the attenuation levels before preparing the prototype. “As researchers and scientists, we try to reduce the amount of animal trials, and simulation has allowed that,” said Maldari. “It is a powerful tool to estimate the behavior of the signals within biological tissues before investigating them experimentally.” The use of simulation allowed the team to define accurate models for galvanic IBC communication and optimize transceivers for LCP systems.

Future plans for IBC

MicroPort’s future plans involve further studies, where the effect of certain input parameters — such as the electrode size and dipole lengths — on a more complete set of electric field parameters will be investigated. This would help them point out the attenuation difference between diastolic and systolic periods. As of now, the researchers are working on the design of an ultralow-power receiver for LCP synchronization purposes. The new receiver could potentially mark groundbreaking innovation for dual-chamber pacemakers.

COMSOL
www.comsol.com

Reference
Maldari, Mirko, et al. “Wide frequency characterization of Intra-Body Communication for Leadless Pacemakers”, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, vol. 67, no. 11, pp. 3223–3233, 2020.

Synopsys and Simpleware are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Synopsys, Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. COMSOL Multiphysics is a registered trademark of COMSOL AB.

COMSOL is excited to announce COMSOL Days 2021. These 1-day virtual events feature live technical presentations, keynote talks from invited speakers, and panel discussions focused on using multiphysics modeling and simulation to accelerate product development and advance research. Parallel tracks cover the latest news in COMSOL Multiphysics and include sessions for attendees who are looking to understand how simulation, and the creation and deployment of specialized apps, can benefit their organization. In interactive Tech Cafés on specialized topics, COMSOL application engineers and technical product managers will share modeling best practices and field questions from COMSOL users and attendees on their simulation projects. COMSOL Day attendance is free of charge.

Jeanette Littmarck, sales director at COMSOL and project leader for COMSOL Days, says: “We have found that the online format is convenient and efficient for many, and we are really happy about the activity level at these events. Attendees are participating in discussions, and ask a lot of great questions. And according to attendee feedback, COMSOL Days are providing the great experience that we strive to provide.”

More than 40 online COMSOL Day events are planned for 2021 and cover a wide range of application areas, including:

• Engineering education and research
• MEMS
• Batteries
• Optics and photonics
• Biomedical applications
• Acoustics
• Vehicle electrification
• AC/DC
• Heat transfer in material processing

A number of COMSOL Days cater to a geographic region, with guest speakers from the local simulation community. One example is COMSOL Day Canada, where COMSOL is teaming up with CMC Microsystems. CMC manages Canada’s National Design Network and makes the COMSOL software easily accessible to researchers in their network. Owain Jones, CAD manager at CMC and guest speaker at COMSOL Day Canada, said, “Cohosting this event is a great way for COMSOL and CMC to service the Canadian microsystems R&D community. Our members can connect with both CMC and COMSOL, ask questions, and learn about topics that are relevant to their work.”

Events that are open for registration are listed here: COMSOL Days 2021. The list of events will be updated throughout the year.

COMSOL
www.comsol.com

Multiphysics simulations are becoming more complex, and take place earlier in the design cycle

Jean Thilmany, Senior Editor

Using multiphysics simulation software in tandem with design keeps engineers from following hypotheses that lead to dead ends. Of course, that significantly cuts development time, especially for complex products on which many physical forces come together: for instance, solid-state cooking ovens and the sonar on unmanned, undersea drones.

If the examples seem oddly specific, it’s because engineers who develop both types of applications described how their teams use Comsol multiphysics software at the Comsol Conference held online in October. The analysis software simulates how multiple, real-time physical forces would affect design.

Because Lauren Lagua works for a sonar team primarily funded by research and development dollars, “We don’t have a lot of time to spend on design and implementation,” she says. Lagua is an acoustic engineer with The Northrop Grumman Undersea Systems group. As a mechanical designer and acoustic analyst, she integrates tests equipment for undersea sonar systems and payloads for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs).

To make the most of funds, her team created a workflow for quick test-and-verify design. For transducers, their design method calls upon swift, but multiple rounds of prototyping and verifying. All the while, they must ensure the transducer can be rapidly manufactured. The transducers convert variants in pressure, brightness, or other physical qualities into an electrical signal.

Though Lagua’s team solves for electrical and acoustics tests early in the initial design stage, that doesn’t mean they’ve perfected design right off the bat. The process involves many design changes and modifications—or as Lagua puts it, “around and around we go.”

Of course, the models begin with design and CAD, but using Comsol for analysis in conjunction with design is the secret sauce that speeds the process, Lagua says. Because they simulate as they design, they get to the end result much faster than if they had to hand off the model to a dedicated analyst and await results.

“It allows us to quickly iterate on a design, to try out designs, to identify issues early on in the design phase and mitigate and fix them before they become bigger issues,” Lagua says.

“Say I’m building a transducer made of some type of material and I bond it to an electric substrate and see a bubble,” she says. “I can make a hypothesis about what failed. I then change the design, and test it with Comsol and compare it to our test events. We find issues with models and correct them quickly.”

“We’re able to design, prototype, test and verify a design sometimes in as little as a week,” she adds.

New materials and tank testing
Because it simulates how the material from which the object is made affects performance, the analysis software also helps engineers establish the material properties the transducer needs. They also use it to test prospective new materials, Lagua adds.

“We figure out if we have to change the design based on the prototype and maybe changing the materials is part of that,” she adds.

“The challenge is: materials vendors don’t always give you all their materials properties. And you need them,” Lagua says. “So, we use Comsol to model the materials.”

The researchers do this by plugging the materials properties they do have into the simulation and analysis software. They also find the materials they deem most similar to the one they are using and put those material properties in those as well.

“So, if I’m experimenting with a new polyurethane, it comes down to what we know about polyurethane in general. Then we look at the differences in data between the model and the test information and change and tweak the information we do have,” she says.

What is the test information she refers to?

Well, of course, the team needs real-world measurements to verify against and plug into the analysis software. These tests are also how they verify material properties against the information they have. They create model prototypes and study them, to study how that prototype would perform in the field.

Acoustical test events, as they’re called, take place at a specialized underseas testing facility that simulate open-water testing. The facility her team uses features a 50-foot-diameter, 300,0000-gallon tank lined with redwood for sound baffling. Onsite test and measurement equipment are placed on the prototype to gather immediate feedback and readings.

“It’s the closest an engineer gets to measuring how a device will act deep in the ocean—without actually taking the device deep in the ocean,” Lagua says.

“We take the results we get from the facility and bring them back into Comsol,” she says. “Then, with Comsol, you can run the same acoustic testing you do at an open-water tank,” she adds. “We have that information in our analysis software.

“Then we can and relate it back to our earlier test data and verify and tweak our model,” she adds. “We figure out if we have to change design or maybe change materials to optimize transducer performance.”

The engineers optimize transducer performance-based how that particular transducer’s end use.

“For example, we’ll optimize for acoustical performance: the highest level of sensitivity to capture the lowest amount of sound while having a large, broadband frequency coverage to hear over a very large range of frequencies,” Lagua says. “We’re really optimizing for multiple things in parallel.”

At the conference, Lagua shared one of the systems created through her group’s design iteration process: a µSAS (pronounced “micro-sas”) sonar to be affixed on UUVs. The micro-sas is small in size, weight, and power.

The interferometric synthetic aperture sonar produces high-quality, 3-D images, enables longer sorties, and higher area coverage rates for UUV missions, says Alan Lytle, vice president of undersea systems at Northrop Grumman. The sonar takes 2-D sas and 3-D bathymetric images.

The UUV vehicles carry six sonar systems, which can be preprogrammed for the needs of the mission, Lagua says.

“We have sonars on both sides of the vehicle so you can look at images from two different aspect ratios and interpret them in 3-D just as your eyes would,” she adds.

“Because of its very small scale we were constrained in size, weight and power for our system,” she says. “We wanted the best acoustics possible at the smallest scale while conserving as much energy as much as possible.”

The group tested their late prototypes by sending them down to take imagery of a ship that sank on the bay near their Maryland facility.

“In the 3-D image you can see the ship is in a big trough and the front is sticking out of a hole,” Lagua points out. “You wouldn’t be able to see that in 2-D.”

While she did not say exactly what sonar technology her team worked on, in February, Northrup Grumman announced that the company’s µSAS interferometric synthetic aperture sonar will be integrated onto L3Harris Technologies’ Iver4 UUVs.

The Iver4 UUV weighs 200-pounds, is nine inches in diameter and 99-inches long. Integration of synthetic aperture sonar on UUV of this diameter represents a significant step forward for the operational capability of small-class vehicles, according to Lytle.

The next-gen microwave oven
Then we veer to quite a different use for simulation in the early (and late) design stages. Illinois Tool Works (ITW) Food Equipment Group uses Comsol to analyze and simulate new heating methods for their solid-state ovens. The ovens, intended for commercial use, can cook a variety of foods, all at the same time and their different temperatures, says Chris Hopper, radio frequency systems engineer at ITW. He also spoke at the Comsol conference.

Solid stage ovens differ from convection microwaves, which use the same magnetron technology developed for radar in World War II. A “regular” microwave oven uses the open-loop magnetron system to heat foods.

But magnetron-based systems have many limitations, including low power and phase control, short lifetime, and high-voltage power supplies, Hopper says.

On the other hand, RF solid-state cooking features a closed-loop feedback system that can adapt to various loads and measure the food’s properties at any time during the cooking process, Hopper says.

“With solid-state, you can vary the power, measure what goes into the cavity and is coming out, and you can teach the oven how to intelligently respond over time to the feedback it gets,” he says.

“A magnetron can last from 12 to 18 months, but with solid-state power, the lifetime can be amplified for many years,” Hopper adds. “And the performance doesn’t degrade over time.”

“But before you start building, you want to investigate basic physical phenomena because we’re talking about a metal box with multiple phenomena,” he says.

Hopper’s team uses Comsol to iterate on the design using LiveLink for MatLab. The software allows them to synchronize their model with Comsol Multiphyics and define geometry, run multiphysics simulations, and optimize the model accordingly. For instance, they use simulation to study their model’s heating patterns.

“We look at what the presence of the food changes in terms of interference, hot and cold spots, and other qualities,” he says. “How does changing the phase affect the food itself?

“We don’t need it to be exact,” Hopper adds. “We’ll look at the accuracy once we’ve established that the simulation represents real-life experiments accurately,” he says.

“The culmination of our work is to develop algorithms,” Hopper says. “We can study hundreds of combinations of different phases in different sources. We can look at the data behind this and test and train models mainly worthy of further development for an algorithm.

“With simulations, we can phase out what wouldn’t work for outcomes we’re interested in,” Hopper says. “It saves us a lot of time because we don’t go down dead ends for algorithm development that may not work out.”

To study each phase and frequency combination separately would take weeks using testing equipment in a lab, he adds.

The virtual simulations also cuts labor costs in an unusual way, as the engineers run fewer experiments with actual oven prototypes and the food they cook.

To make those simulations available to product specialists, who don’t need or want to see the fine print, the ITW engineers created an application from the Comsol data. Product specialists download it, view it, and offer feedback based on their own experience, Hopper says.

“We have a chef here who is responsible for bringing value to our customers,” Hopper says. “There are certain questions he wants answered and, through the app, he doesn’t want to try it out in the kitchen many times. “He can look at temperature, airspeed, time and determine the parameters of the food he can cook and how the food will change as the result of those things.

In the end, many companies are learning that multiphysics simulation can be as important as model creation itself, says Bjorn Sjodin, Comsol vice president of product marketing. He calls the trend “the democratization of simulation.”

“More engineers are using simulation,” he says. And he expects the trend to continue.

The capability to simplify complex analysis and simulation by making application expands the reach beyond engineers.

Soon, a sales representative may be demonstrating oven phase and frequency to a potential customer. After all, “there’s an app for that.”

COMSOL
www.comsol.com