Multiphysics modelling upgrades to 64bit platforms

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Dec 2, 2004

Femlab 3.1 is the latest release of Comsol's breakthrough multiphysics mathematical modelling environment.

Femlab 3.1 is the latest release of Comsol's breakthrough multiphysics mathematical modelling environment.

The new package adds access to leading-edge 64bit computing platforms and introduces a new solver technology, to deliver a giant leap in performance.

Now available for operation on 64bit platforms such as Linux on the AMD64 and the Itanium, or HP-UX and Solaris, users can effectively add as much memory as needed for complex projects.

In addition to more computational power, Femlab 3.1's solver techniques have also been enhanced.

A new multi-grid preconditioner optimises computationally intensive routines for maximum performance with a significant reduction in solution times and memory consumption.

In the same execution time needed to compute a given problem on a 32bit desktop PC with 2Gbyte of memory, the new 64bit version of Femlab will compute a problem six times as large.

The combination of 64bit support and solver enhancements enables Femlab to deal quickly with extremely large problems in the order of millions of DOFs (degrees of freedom).

For example, when computing the flow of air in the gas channels of a fuel cell stack, Femlab 3.1 solves the Navier-Stokes equations governing the flow through the complex 3D geometry even though the problem size exceeds a million DOFs.

An even more complex example that requires extreme computational power is computing the electric field in a radar reflector, where problem sizes can exceed 20 million DOFs.

Further enhancements work hand in hand with this increase in raw power to improve Femlab's performance and flexibility.

For instance, a new structured meshing technique allows users to choose from quadrilateral, hexahedral and prism elements for the optimal discretisation of a given geometry.

Models can now also combine different types of meshes to achieve the best overall results in a convenient and economic way.

With Femlab 3.1, Comsol introduces a straightforward way to set up any physics interactions among different parts of a model.

Easier modelling of multiple geometries with innovative coupling of field variables takes the multiphysics capabilities of Femlab beyond any software of its type on the market.

In Femlab, users simply type in a coupling between the physics on common boundaries, and the software automatically handles the interconnection, thus enabling rapid modelling even of complex assemblies.

This represents a dramatic improvement compared with the way that specialised modelling tools with ad-hoc support for multiphysics force users to struggle with low-level code to couple physics between different geometries.

Dr Said Zarhai uses Femlab in advanced research in both his position as a project leader at ABB Corporate Research, Vasteras, Sweden and as a professor at the Fax�n Laboratory of the Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm).

His work focuses on modelling industrial and scientific problems in the process industries.

Provided with a prerelease version of Femlab 3.1, Dr Zarhai is able to do more-advanced research than ever before.

"With the new multi-geometry linking I can easily set up one model that includes inter-relationships between mechanics, chemical reactions and electromagnetics, and run a simulation to explore the complete system".

"Femlab's already top-ranked multiphysics environment has become even more powerful".

A final feature that eases the modelling process is automatic documentation of user-created models, which serves as an excellent basis for sharing results with colleagues and creating formal reports.

With the push of a button, a built-in report generator documents all important model attributes.

Users can print reports directly and also save them as extensible HTML files.

With this release, the core Femlab package additionally supports a number of optional new addon tools for specific applications areas: the Earth Science Module, the Heat Transfer Module, and the MEMS Module.

With them, Femlab provides convenient user interfaces, equation set-ups and complete pre-written models for the simulation and analysis of such complex systems as subsurface fluid movement and chemical waste streams, resistive heating and radiative heat transfer, as well as microrobots and microfluidics.

These complement Femlab's existing dedicated tools for chemical engineering, electromagnetics and structural mechanics.

System requirements.

Femlab 3.1 runs under Windows 98/2000/NT 4.0/XP as well as Linux, Solaris and HP-UX.

64bit support is available under Linux (running on the AMD64 and Itanium processors), and under Unix (for the Solaris and HP-UX operating systems).

The minimum system configuration is a Pentium processor, 256Mbyte of RAM (512Mbyte recommended) and an OpenGL-compatible graphics card.

A single-user perpetual license for Femlab 3.1 lists for GBP 4995 including first-class support and automatic upgrades for 12 months; special academic pricing is available.