If you’ve read the COMSOL Blog before, you might know that we like to include animations in our blog posts to help illustrate concepts more clearly. Most of these animations are exported directly from the COMSOL Multiphysics® software, which means that you can export animations for your own simulations, too. At the bottom of this post, we link to a video to show you how to do that.

When modeling a rotating machine, it’s important to study the vibrations influencing its behavior in order to avoid machine failure. One way to accomplish this is with the new Rotordynamics Module, an expansion to the add-on Structural Mechanics Module for the COMSOL Multiphysics® software. Today, we’ll introduce you to the Rotordynamics Module and walk you through its helpful features and functionality for improving your rotating machinery design process.

Finding a scientific explanation for why ice is slippery seems simple enough, but it has actually been a subject of debate and confusion for centuries. As part of the world begins to bundle up for a blustery winter, let’s explore the science behind how the slipperiness of ice enables us to ski, skate, and even fall down in the parking lot.

Electrodynamic magnetic levitation can occur when there are time-varying magnetic fields in the vicinity of a conductive material. In this blog post, we will demonstrate how to model this principle with two examples: a TEAM benchmark problem of an electrodynamic levitation device and an electrodynamic wheel.

For many years, it’s been possible to analyze synchronized CAD geometries in COMSOL Multiphysics® via the LiveLink™ interfacing products. But did you know that you can also incorporate this functionality into an easy-to-use simulation app? With an app, you can dynamically modify your geometry in a CAD program such as SOLIDWORKS® and use this information to analyze new product designs. Today, we will demonstrate how to do so, using the new Bike Frame Analyzer app as an example.

Traditional lithium-ion batteries use an electrolyte based on a flammable liquid solvent, which can cause them to catch fire if they overheat. In recent years, nonflammable solid electrolytes have been investigated as an alternative to improve battery design and safety. Optimizing this technology for industrial applications, however, requires a better understanding of the electrochemical processes inside the device. Simulation serves as a valuable tool for this purpose, helping to realize the use of solid-state lithium-ion batteries in the near future.

In finite element modeling, you may encounter formulations where a force does not monotonically increase with displacement. You can see this property in many material models that include degradation of the material. Such behavior is represented by a negative stiffness. In this blog post, we discuss some examples of negative stiffness, including the physical backgrounds and numerical implications. These ideas are not confined to mechanical analysis, even though the term stiffness originates in that field.

Transdermal drug delivery (TDD) patches continuously deliver drugs into the body for a certain amount of time. However, the skin is designed to keep out foreign substances, like drugs. To create a TDD patch that successfully bypasses this barrier, simulation can be used to study drug release and absorption into the skin. To analyze this process, Veryst Engineering created a TDD patch model with the COMSOL Multiphysics® software and compared the results to experimental data.

In a recent blog post, we discussed how to use the Domain Decomposition solver for computing large problems in the COMSOL Multiphysics® software and parallelizing computations on clusters. We show how to save memory by a spatial decomposition of the degrees of freedom on clusters and single-node computers with the Recompute and clear option. To further illustrate the Domain Decomposition solver and highlight reduced memory usage, let’s look at a thermoviscous acoustics problem: simulating the transfer impedance of a perforate.

The Domain Decomposition solver is a memory-efficient iterative algorithm with inherent parallelism on the geometric level. We can use this method to compute large modeling problems that can’t be solved with other direct or iterative methods. This solver’s primary field of application is on clusters, but it can also enable the solution of large problems on laptops and workstations. Let’s see how to use this functionality in the COMSOL Multiphysics® software.