Multiphysics modeling and simulation helps organizations innovate faster, smarter, and at lower cost. Incorporating the COMSOL Multiphysics® software into the R&D workflow enables engineering teams to build accurate models of real-world designs, devices, and processes as well as create their own standalone simulation apps to spread the benefits of multiphysics modeling to more teams, departments, and customers. This ultimately leads to a stronger understanding of product behavior and quicker answers during the development cycle.
Today marks the release of COMSOL Multiphysics® version 6.4, which makes the software even more powerful through faster simulations for all physics with GPU-accelerated solvers, a new product for simulating the motion of solid particles in bulk processes, and a new framework for time-explicit structural dynamic analysis.
Why Multiphysics?
Models represent real-world counterparts and the world around us is multiphysics in nature. In other words, being able to fully couple two or more physics phenomena is essential for generating numerical simulations that accurately mimic reality.
As an example, let’s consider a loudspeaker. We could measure just the magnetic field in the voice coil in a single-physics model, but it may be more useful to also study how the magnetic field interacts with the other loudspeaker components to create force and vibrations. Using COMSOL Multiphysics®, it’s simple to add and couple however many physics phenomena are needed for a realistic model. In the loudspeaker case, we would then couple electromagnetics, structural mechanics, and acoustics for the complete analysis. There are no limitations for which phenomena or how many phenomena can be coupled in your COMSOL models.
Left: A single-physics loudspeaker model visualizing the electromagnetic force acting on the voice coil. Right: A multiphysics model that also accounts for the acoustic–structure interaction.
That said, the COMSOL Multiphysics® software is a modeling and simulation platform that provides both fully coupled multiphysics and single-physics modeling capabilities. This means that engineers and scientists across industries and disciplines can use one modeling software with a consistent user interface for all types of models. In short, multiphysics modeling helps organizations make smarter design decisions, generate new ideas, reduce costs for physical prototypes and experiments, and speed up product development.
Since models represent real-world counterparts, they need to behave according to the laws of physics, but how they look matters, too. By adding the right texture and colors and thoughtful lighting, it becomes easier to visualize the model as the real object it represents and understand the underlying process. Depending on what type of analysis you’re running, the choice of plot type or color table may also affect how you interpret the results. The COMSOL Multiphysics® software platform includes functionality for building geometries, assigning materials, and meshing as well as a host of visualization features.
Adding environmental reflections to bring an electric motor model to life.
Combining different plot types to create movement in a mixer.
Including realistic materials to show the inner workings of a loudspeaker driver.
Overview of the COMSOL® Modeling and Simulation Software
The simulation-driven R&D workflow is most successful when colleagues across teams, departments, organizations, and enterprises are able to access and contribute to the creation of accurate models that can be used for innovation, design, and optimization. To that end, the COMSOL Multiphysics® platform includes three main workspaces:
- Model Builder
- Contains all of the functionality that modeling and simulation specialists need to build, solve, visualize, and evaluate physics-based models.
- Application Builder
- Provides the modeling specialists with user-friendly tools for building custom simulation apps for use by colleagues and customers.
- Model Manager
- Provides a structured workspace for organizing models and apps, with version control, search and filter functionality, and efficient storage, as well as functionality for copying sequences of operation from one model to reuse in another.
Left: The Model Builder showing the setup and results of an IGBT module, which is a multiphysics model. Middle: The Application Builder as it appears while building a simulation app. Right: The Model Manager, demonstrating the feature for comparing two model files.
One Software Environment, Any Engineering Field
Depending on the task at hand, you may want to extend the core modeling functionality with specialized features. There are various add-on modules that contain features specific to electromagnetics, structural mechanics, acoustics, fluid flow, heat transfer, and chemical engineering. Since the COMSOL® software is a multiphysics software, everything from the product suite connects seamlessly through the platform product. Additionally, you can easily interface with CAD and other third-party software via the LiveLink™ products.
Tip: See how organizations around the world use COMSOL Multiphysics® in the User Story Gallery.
Standalone Simulation Apps Accelerate Innovation
Anyone with a COMSOL Multiphysics® software license can build and maintain their own simulation apps. Anyone who also adds COMSOL Compiler™ can turn their apps into standalone executable files that can be distributed to anyone and run anywhere in the world. Through standalone apps, colleagues can test design variations without taking up the modeling specialist’s time. Even those far removed from the modeling specialist can use apps to forecast outcomes based on specific inputs and make decisions based on simulation results without knowing how to set up and run the underlying model (or in some cases without even knowing they are using multiphysics simulation in the first place).
The drag-and-drop of user interface components and widgets in the Application Builder makes it straightforward to build apps that contain custom interfaces with inputs and outputs tailored to a specific need — offering the app user all of the benefits of simulation without having to put effort into building the underlying model. Compiling them into standalone apps is as easy as clicking a button and it is up to you if you want to sell your apps or provide them for free, add password protection or share unrestricted, set an expiration date, and so on. When you build your own standalone apps with the COMSOL® software, you are in full control over how many apps you make, to whom you distribute them, and in what way.
Now, some organizations may prefer complete control over who has access to their simulation apps and which versions of the apps should be available. In that case, they can upload, manage, and run their apps through their own COMSOL Server™ environment instead of compiling them into standalone apps. COMSOL Server™ comes with administrative tools for managing user access to apps, user accounts and groups, and multiprocessor utilization.
Building Lightning-Fast Simulation Apps with Surrogate Models
The Application Builder in COMSOL Multiphysics® as well as the add-on product COMSOL Compiler™ have been around for many years. Then, in 2023, we made it possible to build lightning-fast apps by releasing functionality for training surrogate models using machine learning. When you include data-driven surrogate models in your simulation apps, users of the apps will get near-instantaneous simulation results based on their inputs. That’s because surrogate models are trained to approximate the behavior of more computationally expensive, full-fledged finite element models, without sacrificing accuracy. In version 6.3 of the software, it became possible to quickly create surrogate models with GPU-based training support as well as both use surrogate models and link simulation apps to external sensors, databases, and web services. With these updates, users can build and operate apps as effective digital twins.
Today, with the release of COMSOL Multiphysics® version 6.4, users can now export network parameters for deep neural network (DNN) surrogate models and conduct batch and cluster computing for surrogate model training data generation, which enables efficient parallel computation for large training datasets.
More News in the Latest Version of COMSOL Multiphysics®
The new version of the COMSOL Multiphysics® platform introduces GPU-accelerated simulations for all physics, time-explicit structural dynamics, a new product for granular flow, and many new features across the product suite to bring users even better modeling capabilities than before.
No one likes waiting, especially when it comes to getting model results. Our developers are continuously working on improving solver speed to cut down on how long it takes for various models to solve, all while maintaining accuracy. With the variety of modern hardware architectures, delivering performance is also tightly coupled with leveraging these platforms, including NVIDIA GPUs. In that vein, COMSOL Multiphysics® offers a variety of numerical solvers and settings for simulating a wide range of designs, devices, and processes on CPUs and now NVIDIA GPUs.
One type of solver available in the software is direct solvers, which deliver reliable performance for highly coupled multiphysics problems and are commonly used in fields like structural mechanics.
In version 6.4, the software’s selection of direct solvers is expanded with the NVIDIA CUDA® direct sparse solver (cuDSS), which brings GPU support for all areas of physics. cuDSS is a GPU-accelerated sparse direct solver optimized for hybrid CPU–GPU computation and can be used with all recent NVIDIA® GPU cards. Available for single GPU, or multi-GPU configurations, cuDSS can greatly increase the speed of both single- and multiphysics simulations. It is particularly beneficial for tightly coupled nonlinear problems and modeling scenarios where direct solvers are already in use. Testing benchmark models with this solver has shown speedups of 5 times or greater.
Acoustic transfer-impedance model of a perforate with 1.75 million equation degrees of freedom solved with the new cuDSS solver.
In the previous version of the software, we launched an accelerated solver (distinct from the new cuDSS solver) for the Pressure Acoustics, Time Explicit interface in the Acoustics Module. This solver first introduced GPU support for simulating pressure acoustics in the time domain, leveraging the CUDA-X (cuBLAS) library, which allowed users working on room and car cabin acoustics to get their modeling results significantly quicker than before. In version 6.4, this solver now supports multiple GPUs on a single machine, as well as GPUs in cluster configurations. Thanks to this advancement, room and car cabin acoustic simulations run even faster, and the model scale can be increased in terms of resolved wavelengths.
To demonstrate just how much faster it is to run time-explicit pressure acoustics with multi-GPU support, we conducted a test using our Car Cabin Acoustics — Transient Analysis tutorial model. The total time for computation and results analysis in the first study of the model was 57 minutes in version 6.3; in version 6.4, this duration was cut down to 50 minutes when using a single GPU (NVIDIA® RTX 6000 Ada). When running the simulation on two GPU cards, the times was nearly halved to 29 minutes.
Note: The Pressure Acoustics, Time Explicit interface is supported for all license types when using a single GPU but requires a floating network license when using multiple GPUs.
In-cabin acoustic simulations, such as this one of a car cabin, now benefit from NVIDIA® GPU acceleration in COMSOL Multiphysics® version 6.4, enabling faster and more scalable analyses.
Granular Flow Module
There is a new specialized add-on module to the COMSOL Multiphysics® platform for modeling granular processes such as hopper discharge, silo storage, chute transport, powder spreading, and mixing. The module comes with functionality that makes it possible to resolve particle-scale interactions such as collisions, adhesion, rotational resistance, and heat transfer. Its capabilities can help engineers and researchers gain insight into both microscale particle dynamics and macroscale bulk behavior.
Industries and areas where understanding the behavior of bulk solids is critical for efficient and reliable operations will find this module especially important, such as pharmaceuticals, chemical processing, agriculture, mining, and additive manufacturing.
Learn more about the Granular Flow Module.
Grains being transported using a screw conveyor. The grains are colored by their release time.
Explicit Structural Dynamics
To illustrate another major improvement introduced in version 6.4, consider a cell phone. The touchscreen and buttons are mechanical and electrical elements that work together, while the battery undergoes chemical reactions involving the movement of ions and electrical current, among other processes. The software has always facilitated the simulation of such interactions, but there has been one important scenario that users could not simulate until now.
With the latest version, users can now perform time-explicit structural dynamic analyses. In the case of the cell phone, this new functionality enables users to test the impact of a drop test on said phone. By doing so, one can identify the areas of aluminum casing that would be damaged from this test as well as track where damage would spread based on the height from which the phone was dropped. Time-explicit structural dynamic analysis is equally important for tracking other high-speed, transient, and highly nonlinear events such as impact, crushing, metal forming, and elastic wave propagation.
Explicit structural dynamics capabilities enable a new class of simulations in COMSOL Multiphysics® version 6.4, including drop tests of handheld consumer electronics.
The explicit formulation supports a wide range of nonlinear structural materials, including:
- Hyperelastic
- Plastic
- Viscoplastic
- Creep
The functionality for time-explicit structural dynamic analyses can also be used together with the new functionality for contact modeling. In version 6.4, it is now possible to perform contact modeling that automatically sets up contact conditions between many objects arbitrarily. This allows for easily creating models with a large number of possible contact interactions.
A tower of wooden blocks being hit by a ball. In this simulation, there are 56 objects that may interact with each other in ways that would otherwise be difficult to predict.
Next Steps
New to COMSOL Multiphysics®? Let us know what you’re working on and we’ll share information relevant to your business needs.
If you want to read about all software updates in detail, head on over to the COMSOL Multiphysics® version 6.4 release highlights page.
NVIDIA and CUDA are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.
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