COMSOL provided attendees with a sneak preview of the latest updates of the COMSOL Multiphysics® and COMSOL Server™ products at the annual COMSOL Conference in Boston this week. Attendees learned about current and future developments of the software from Svante Littmarck, President and CEO, during his keynote address. “Our customers are at the forefront of innovation behind the products that will shape our future,” says Littmarck. “We work tirelessly to support their efforts by increasing the modeling power of the COMSOL® software and by making collaboration among simulation experts and their colleagues the core of everything we do. This annual event is our opportunity to connect and exchange knowledge within the COMSOL community on multiphysics modeling.”
Microwave Journal attended on the first day and broadcast Svante Littmarck's keynote talk on Facebook Live - you can watch the video here:
https://www.facebook.com/MicrowaveJournal/videos/10155618403403567/
Looking Ahead at the Upcoming Release
The most noteworthy updates in COMSOL Multiphysics 5.3a scheduled to be released in the fourth quarter of 2017, are:
- Acoustics and acoustic-structure interactions based on a hybrid boundary element-finite element (BEM-FEM) method
- Impulse response for ray acoustics
- Magnetostatics based a hybrid boundary element-finite element (BEM-FEM) method
- Shape memory alloy (SMA) materials for structural analysis
- Revolutionary new method for capacitively-coupled plasma (CCP) simulations
- Support for 3DConnexion® SpaceMouse® devices
- Turbulent-flow enabled inlets for CFD simulations
- 150 new materials and 1300 new material properties in the Material Library product
- More than 60 substrate material properties for RF and microwave analysis
For RF/microwave engineers, the last bullet is a key improvement with 60 laminate material properties added from Rogers Corporation greatly improving PCB modeling. Comsol will be adding more materials and other manufacturer's in the future including Isola. Other RF additions include RF continuous frequency sweeping function and the only commercial software that model RF plasma for semiconductor processing and other etching/deposition applications. Everyone in attendance had the opportunity to test the beta version of the software to try out this new feature, along with many updates to be announced later this year.
Maybe a less glamorous announcement, Comsol has concentrated on fixing bugs and making improvements to the current version. They had over 4,000 bug reports and have reduced that down to about 100. It might not be exciting but certainly greatly improves the product and its usefulness.
COMSOL Conference 2017 at a Glance
The COMSOL Conference features a robust technical program with seven events held around the world. The first stop in Boston attracted about 300 attendees. Over one hundred user presentations were given. Panel discussions on medical and acoustics simulation were highly anticipated new additions to the program. The exhibit featured technical computing software and services, hardware providers, and HPC specialists among others. A wide span of breakout sessions included minicourses and technical workshops on topics ranging from heat transfer, and structural mechanics, to meshing, solvers, optimization, post processing, cluster computing, and more. For more information, visit www.comsol.com/conference/boston.