Composite materials are heterogeneous materials composed of at least two integrated components. Among the different types of composite materials, layered composite materials are quite common and are widely used for aircraft, spacecraft, wind turbine, automobile, marine, buildings, and safety equipment use cases. The Composite Materials Module, add-on to the COMSOL Multiphysics® software, includes built-in features and functionality specifically designed for studying layered composite structures. Fiber-reinforced plastics, laminated plates, and sandwich panels are a few common examples of layered composite materials.

It’s here! Version 5.4 introduces a new product, COMSOL Compiler™, which enables creators of simulation applications to deploy them to users without restrictions. In addition, the latest version of the COMSOL Multiphysics® software brings enhanced usability and new physics-specific modeling features, as well as the new Composite Materials Module for modeling thin, layered structures.

The Doppler effect, or Doppler shift, occurs when the movement of an observer relative to a source (or vice versa) causes a change in wavelength or frequency. Discovered by Austrian physicist Christian Doppler in 1803, this phenomenon is experienced in many different ways, such as when an ambulance passes you by and you hear an audible change in pitch. Using the COMSOL Multiphysics® software, you can model the Doppler effect for acoustics applications.

Today marks the release of a new version of the COMSOL® software, which includes core functionality updates and major updates to the add-on modules. Read on for a brief introduction to some of the significant updates to the COMSOL Multiphysics® and COMSOL Server™ platform products and add-on modules.

In biophysics, electrochemistry, and the design of catalytic reactors, researchers and engineers exploit the special chemical and physical properties of solid surfaces involving both gas-solid and liquid-solid interfaces. This blog post discusses the basics of the kinetics of surface reactions at simple surfaces and how they can be modeled with the COMSOL Multiphysics® software. In a subsequent blog post, we will look at how mass transport and reaction kinetics at surfaces are described for homogenized porous media.

To help understand the complicated universe we live in, we have compartmentalized physics phenomena into distinct disciplinary specializations. However, natural and engineering problems often cross these utilitarian borders. A major strength of the COMSOL Multiphysics® software is the ease with which such cross-disciplinary interactions, which we refer to as multiphysics interactions, can be accounted for. The COMSOL® software provides a plethora of built-in multiphysics couplings and even enables users to implement their own physics couplings.

What do soap films, catenary cables, and light beams have in common? They behave in ways that minimize certain quantities. Such problems are prevalent in science and engineering fields such as biology, economics, elasticity theory, material science, and image processing. You can simulate many such problems using the built-in physics interfaces in the COMSOL Multiphysics® software, but in this blog series, we will show you how to solve variational problems using the equation-based modeling features.

Creating new physics interfaces that you can save and share, modifying the underlying equations of a model, and simulating a wider variety of devices and processes: These are just a few ways you can benefit from the equation-based modeling capabilities of the COMSOL Multiphysics® software.

When simulating electromagnetic devices, a common mistake is putting everything into a model at the same time, including a complicated geometry, complex material properties, and a mixed bag of boundary conditions. This makes the model run for a long time and you might get frustrated when your simulation results are physically wrong, without any clues as to why. Today, we will discuss how to efficiently set up simple RF, microwave, and millimeter-wave circuit models in the COMSOL Multiphysics® software.

Plasma modeling normally requires knowing the electron energy distribution function (EEDF) as well as transport properties like electron mobility and diffusivity. To accurately calculate these quantities with the Boltzmann equation, we must also know the electron density (and possibly the density of all species subject to electron impact reactions). However, the electron (and species densities) are outputs of a plasma model, resulting in a catch-22. Let’s take a look at how to overcome this challenge using an example app.