I have previously blogged about 3D printing and how it would be great if you could go from model to product in one step. Now it seems as though the Stereolithography (STL) file format is reaching its limits for being useful as a standard for this type of application. The printers themselves, and what they are capable of, are outstripping the abilities of the file formats to support their new capabilities. Moves are being made to develop a better file […]

It has been some time since we’ve had the “Tips & Tricks” column in COMSOL News. Many people have asked me for tips on how to use COMSOL Multiphysics, so I figured I would share some with you here on the blog. The first in this new series of tips and tricks explains how you can create high-resolution images of COMSOL models.

All this talk about piezoelectricity got me thinking about how surrounded we are by everyday items whose performances rely on this physical process. Examples include inkjet printers, speakers, electric guitars, and ultrasound imaging systems. With so many different common objects utilizing this phenomenon, it may lead you to wonder: what is piezoelectricity?

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 […]

Remember those retro desk ornaments of the 1960’s, those lamps filled with colorful wax that began to move when the lamp was lit? I’m talking about lava lamps, or as I like to call them, “Rayleigh–Taylor instability machines”. They may not be popular among today’s youth, but I still own one and I thought it would be interesting to look beyond the dyed blobs of wax and observe the physics involved in lava lamps.

As promised, I’m back to introduce to you the second tutorial video in the new postprocessing blog series. This video covers the basics of creating plots, including some useful ways you can tweak and customize your plots. For example, have you ever wanted to improve the resolution of a plot, add or modify titles and axis labels, standardize the color bars over multiple graphs in one plot group, modify a deformation plot’s scaling, or view multiple plots in the COMSOL […]

Are you getting the most out of your simulations? There’s a wealth of options for creating plots and animations and for computing and exporting data in COMSOL, odds are you will find some neat features here. We want to get you off to a good start, so I’ve begun a series of tutorial videos covering a wide variety of topics in postprocessing. This tutorial series is suited for new and experienced users alike. You will get to learn the basics […]

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing as it is more widely known as, is on everybody’s mind right now. Manufacturing folks, engineers, and even the general public have taken an interest in 3D printing. In other words, this is not just a fascinating phenomenon to those in the industry — additive manufacturing has been generally accepted as the next “cool” thing in manufacturing.

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 shows, there are other methods, such as using […]

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.