Media Contact:
Tim Niu, Marketing Manager
Phone: +1-781-273-3322
Email: tim@comsol.com

Reader Contact:
Bjorn Sjodin, VP of Engineering
Phone: +1-781-273-3322
Email: bjorn@comsol.com

BURLINGTON, MA (September 6, 2005) — COMSOL, Inc., is releasing version 3.2 of COMSOL Multiphysics™, a scientific-modeling package whose new features boost productivity throughout the entire modeling and simulation process. The software now reads geometry files created with all major CAD packages. The graphical user interface encourages the use of a consistent system of engineering units, and a moving-mesh feature allows a model to simulate moving parts and parametric geometries. Improved solvers handle models with millions of degrees of freedom and calculate the answers faster than ever before.

Perhaps most obvious to existing customers is the change of the product name to better reflect the company’s offerings, which now address many areas of scientific computing. Company president Svante Littmarck remarks, “We are renaming our leading product from FEMLAB to COMSOL Multiphysics. That’s already the software’s name in Japan, and it’s one we find better suits our growing product line. Although we started with finite-element method (FEM) software, COMSOL products today and those planned for the future cover considerably more in terms of functionality and appeal.”

To make it easy for users to import CAD drawings for modeling in COMSOL Multiphysics, a suite of optional CAD-import modules read a wide range of industry-standard CAD and mesh file formats starting with those for SolidWorks®, Solid Edge®, NX™, and NASTRAN®. Importing an existing CAD or mesh file enables users to bypass the geometry-creation step, which makes the first step in the modeling process fast and convenient.

The CAD Import Module is based on Parasolid® geometry kernel and includes ACIS® to support the SAT® format. In addition to the native Parasolid and SAT formats, the CAD Import Module also supports the STEP and IGES file formats. Live synchronization with the SolidWorks CAD package enables a truly productive design and modeling environment. Separate CAD-import modules accept the CATIA® V4, CATIA® V5, Autodesk Inventor®, Pro/ENGINEER®, and VDA-FS file formats.

Other features make it far easier to set up a model. For instance, COMSOL Multiphysics’ graphical interface presents each parameter with an appropriate unit; users select from nine common engineering unit systems so that consistent unit labels appear in all dialog boxes, next to data-entry fields, and in postprocessing plots. Examples of supported unit systems are SI, MPa, CGS, and British Imperial Units. This feature avoids the confusion that can arise especially when trying to determine the proper value to enter for a parameter that has compound units, and it eliminates many unnecessary user errors.

Extending modeling into new areas is a Moving Mesh mode that allows COMSOL Multiphysics to easily simulate geometries with moving parts such as those in MEMS (microelectromechanical systems), piezoelectrics, and biology applications as well as free-surface flow and natural wave effects. Users define the desired type of motion such as for the deflection of a flexible barrier in a strong flow of liquid or gas, or even fluid sloshing in a tank. Coupled with the moving-mesh engine is geometric parameterization, where it is possible to describe how a geometry changes without the need to set up a loop in a script file.

New solvers address far larger problems and at faster speeds. For instance, thanks to new multigrid techniques for the Navier-Stokes equations, the package can solve fluid-flow problems ten times larger than before. Improved memory-management techniques remove the bottleneck of requiring contiguous memory so that time-dependent problems can now be of the same size as stationary problems.

Predefined multiphysics application modes make it fast and easy to set up common coupled-physics models that involve electro-thermal, fluid-thermal, fluid-chemical, and thermal-structural interactions. Because these couplings are already set up, the modeling process becomes as easy as for single-physics problems.

Intense research has made COMSOL Multiphysics the only finite-element based software that performs time-domain simulation of electromagnetic waves. This feature is useful, for example, when modeling pulsed excitations such as radar or in high-power optics where materials become nonlinear. The software can perform a frequency sweep in just one step, and the intuitive postprocessing animation can show how a wave propagates or reflects off objects in time. Further, the software offers both time- and frequency-domain electromagnetic analysis in a single package as well as couplings between the two domains. Finally, the new Time-Domain Analysis, Wave Type mode lets users enter coefficients and parameters directly into the wave equation, and the solvers have become extremely efficient. A related addition is the ability to access model data as lumped RLC parameters.

COMSOL Multiphysics is an industry-leading scientific-software package for the modeling and simulation of any physics-based system. A particular strength is its ability to simultaneously account for interdependent, coupled physics, known in the industry as multiphysics phenomena. Researchers working in dedicated disciplines can also find add-on modules that have special user interfaces and optimized application setups; currently available are the Chemical Engineering, Earth Science, Electromagnetics, Heat Transfer, MEMS and Structural Mechanics Modules. The package is available for the Windows, Linux, Solaris, and the Macintosh operating systems.

COMSOL was founded in 1986 in Stockholm, Sweden, and has grown to include offices in Switzerland, Benelux, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and a US presence with offices in Burlington, MA, Los Angeles, CA, and Palo Alto, CA. Additional information about the company is available here.

Trademarks

COMSOL and FEMLAB are registered trademarks of COMSOL AB. COMSOL MULTIPHYSICS is a trademarks of COMSOL AB. All Rights Reserved.

ACIS and SAT are registered trademarks of Spatial Corp. PARASOLID is a registered trademark of UGS Corp. SOLIDWORKS is a registered trademark of SolidWorks Corporation. Other product or brand names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.