Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Blog Posts

A Closer Look at the Physics Involved in Lava Lamps
Remember those retro desk ornaments of the 1960’s, those lamps filled with colorful wax that began to move when the lamp was lit? I’m talking about lava lamps, or as I like to call them, “Rayleigh–Taylor instability machines”. They may not be popular among today’s youth, but I still own one and I thought it would be interesting to look beyond the dyed blobs of wax and observe the physics involved in lava lamps.

The Secret Sauce in the Pipe Flow Module
We developed COMSOL Multiphysics to empower the engineering and science communities with state-of-the-art simulation tools. A key ingredient of this empowerment is flexibility. COMSOL users are already well aware of the full compatibility between various physics. This means you can put any (yes, really any) combination of COMSOL physics together. But that’s not the only way our multiphysics simulation tool is flexible.

A Cool Way to Consider the Environment
According to a study done by Brunel University in the United Kingdom, the food sector is among the top five energy-consuming industries. The transportation of food, including keeping it refrigerated, is one of the larger contributing factors to this energy-consumption and subsequent greenhouse gas emissions.