At the seventh annual user conference in October 2011, Comsol launched its latest version of its flagship product Comsol Multiphysics 4.2a. It includes the Particle Tracing module and Livelink for Creo and many new features.
Particle Tracing computes the trajectory of particles in a fluid or electromagnetic field, including particle-field interactions. Applications include flow visualization, mixing, spraying, particle separation, mass spectrometry, ion optics, beam physics, ion energy distribution functions, acoustic streaming, and ray tracing.
Here is a particle tracing simulation with trajectories or argon ions in a quadrupole mass spectrometer. The electric fields that exert forces on the ions have both ac and dc components, and the combination of the two is essential for the function of the spectrometer. The figure on the right shows the ion energy distribution function at the spectrometer’s collector.
According to Bjorn Sjodin, Comsol vice-president of product management, a variety of different forces are allowed to act on the particles, including forces on charged particles in electric or magnetic fields, drag forces in CFD, electrophoretic forces in microfluidics, acoustic streaming forces in acoustics, and user-defined forces. Loss or gain of mass, charge, or similar quantities may be represented as auxiliary variables and equations for each particle along its trajectory. Particles can be massless or have mass where the movement is governed by Newtonian, Lagrangian, or Hamiltonian formulations from classical mechanics. Low-level access to the mathematical formalism is available for highly customized simulations.
The new expansion of the Comsol LiveLink CAD interoperability products includes Creo Parametric design. By establishing an associative connection between the two applications any changes to a feature in the Creo CAD model automatically updates the geometry in Comsol Multiphysics while retaining physics settings.
All parameters specified in Creo Parametric can be interactively linked with your simulation geometry, which enables multiphysics simulations involving parametric sweeps and design optimization to sync up with the CAD program. The LiveLink for Creo Parametric includes all the capabilities of the Comsol CAD Import Module and enables import and defeaturing of CAD files from all major CAD packages.
Using the LiveLink for Creo Parametric, a simulation of a bus bar electric conductor is created. Since LiveLink synchronizes geometric dimensions between Comsol Multiphysics and Creo Parametric, you can conduct parametric sweeps for design optimization in one simulation.
In addition, the Parasolid geometry kernel is now the default geometry kernel for users of the CAD Import Module and the LiveLink products for CAD. Parasolid enables the handling of more advanced geometry objects for users of any of the LiveLink products including versions for AutoCAD, Inventor, Creo Parametric, Pro/E, SolidWorks, and SpaceClaim.
In addition, Comsol Multiphysics’ model library is now accessible from within the One Window Interface that is included with the LikeLink for SolidWorks. Animations and images can now be created from the One Window Interface. A series of performance enhancements make for quicker synchronization of large models.
COMSOL
www.comsol.com
Filed Under: Software • simulation, ENGINEERING SOFTWARE
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