Comsol > Case Studies > Making Smart Materials Smarter with Multiphysics Simulation

Making Smart Materials Smarter with Multiphysics Simulation

Customer Company Size

Mid-size Company

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Terfenol-D
COMSOL Multiphysics

Tech Stack

Finite Element Analysis (FEA)
Multiphysics Simulation

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Innovation Output
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Digital Twin / Simulation
Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics

Applicable Industries

Electronics

Applicable Functions

Product Research & Development
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Machine Condition Monitoring
Predictive Maintenance

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

ETREMA Products, Inc. is a company that specializes in designing devices using magnetostrictive materials for defense and other industry applications. These applications include sensors, loudspeakers, actuators, SONAR, and energy harvesting devices. ETREMA is the sole commercial producer of Terfenol-D, a giant magnetostrictive material first developed by the U.S. Navy in the 1970s. The company leverages advanced simulation tools to design and optimize their products, ensuring they meet the high standards required for their specialized applications.

The Challenge

Engineers at ETREMA Products, Inc. face the challenge of designing devices using magnetostrictive materials, which change shape when exposed to a magnetic field. These materials are crucial for the production of transducers, sensors, and other high-powered electrical devices. The unique properties of magnetostrictive materials, such as their ability to mechanically respond to magnetic fields and their characteristic nonlinearity, make designing these devices complex. The challenge is to accurately represent the material properties and complex physics interactions within such devices to facilitate the production of the next generation of smart products.

The Solution

ETREMA uses COMSOL Multiphysics to model and simulate the complex interactions within their magnetostrictive devices. Their approach involves creating single-physics models to analyze individual physics and then building multiphysics simulations to determine how these physics interact. This method allows for a detailed and comprehensive understanding of the device's behavior. For example, in designing a close-packed SONAR source array, ETREMA used single-physics models to analyze deformation and stress, and multiphysics models to evaluate the overall electro-mechanical characteristics. The models helped optimize the design by reducing deformation and stress, and by ensuring that magnetic fields stayed confined to the magnetic components, thereby minimizing interference with electronics.

Operational Impact

ETREMA's modeling approach demonstrates the unique flexibility of COMSOL Multiphysics, allowing for both targeted and comprehensive analysis of physics interactions.
The use of single-physics models enables design diagnosis prior to the development of multiphysics models, making it easier to attribute undesired interactions to specific physics types.
Coupled multiphysics models provide a detailed understanding of how individual physics interact in the real world, facilitating the design, evaluation, and optimization of transducer technologies.
The models were validated using experimental data, showing a high degree of accuracy in predicting the behavior of magnetostrictive materials.
ETREMA's approach can be applied to other transducer technologies involving coupled multiphysics interactions, such as piezoelectric, electrostatic, and electromagnetic effects.

Quantitative Benefit

Terfenol-D demonstrates deformations 100 times that of iron.
Iron elongates by 0.002 percent and nickel contracts by 0.007 percent when exposed to a strong magnetic field.