Comsol is set to release Comsol Multiphysics Version 5.5 in November 2019. In this version, the Design Module offers a new sketching tool for easier creation and more versatile parametric control of geometry models, says Daniel Bertilsson, technology manager for mathematics and computer science at Comsol.
Comsol Multiphysics offers tools for engineering modeling, simulation, application, and deployment. It solves for multiple physical effects at the same time.
The company made the update announcement at its annual Comsol Conference held in October in Boston.
New and updated solvers speed a range of simulations. Two new add-on products, the Porous Media Flow Module and the Metal Processing Module, further expand on the product’s suite of multiphysics tools.
The new sketching tool makes it easier to assign dimensions and constraints to planar drawings for 2D modeling and 3D work planes.
“We’ve carefully integrated the new dimensions and constraints tool in the Model Builder so it becomes a natural part of the Comsol Multiphysics workflow,” Bertilsson says. “The new tools for dimensions and constraints can be used together with model parameters in Comsol to drive the simulation, whether for a single run, parametric sweep, or parametric optimization.”
Acoustics Simulations
Another update—new solver technology for acoustics simulations—is a nod to ultrasound technology becoming increasingly important in a range of applications from process engineering and nondestructive testing to consumer electronics.
Other new functionality—based on the time-explicit discontinuous Galerkin method—enables efficient multicore computation of ultrasound propagation in solids and fluids. This includes realistic materials featuring damping and anisotropy. The method also has low-frequency applications, such as in seismology. The multiphysics capability included in this new functionality can seamlessly combine linear elastic wave propagation in a solid and its transition to a fluid, as an acoustic pressure wave, and back again.
The new elastic wave functionality is available for users of the Structural Mechanics Module, MEMS Module, and Acoustics Module. The fluid-structure acoustics coupling is available in the Acoustics Module.
Porous Media Flow Module
This module gives users within industries such as food, pharmaceutical, and biomedical a range of transport analysis capabilities for porous media, trying, and transport in fractures. The flow modules cover linear and nonlinear flow in saturated and variably saturated media with special options for slow and fast porous media flows. The multisphycis simulation capabilities are extensive, with functionality that includes options for calculating effective thermal properties for multicomponent systems, poroelasticity, and transport of chemical species in solid, liquid, and gas phases.
Other highlights of this upgrade include:
- Import and export of the 3D printing and additive manufacturing formats PLY and 3MF.
- Multiple spectral bands for radiation in participating media
- Lumped thermal systems equivalent circuits
- Combined full wave and ray optics simulations
- Minimum-sized standalone application files with Comsol Compiler
- Compressible Euler flow and nonisothermal large eddy simulations
- Editing tools for repair of STL, PLY, and 3MR files
