COMSOL Blog

Using COMSOL to Improve Experiment

Tips & Tricks | Posted on January 27th, 2012 by Phil Kinnane

I was just reading a news report from the Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota. There, Dr. Huber is running a program where seniors perform experiments on cantilever beams and their responses to acoustic waves, both in the air and under water.

Senior John Schmidt matched his experimental results on a perfectly functional cantilever beam with both an analytical model and one performed in COMSOL Multiphysics. He now hopes to match results from a damaged beam with that from a COMSOL model. (Find the article from Gustavus Adolphus College here)

This got me thinking. If a finite-element model gives the same results as both an analytical model and experiment, then I suppose you can trust the finite-element model for other dimensions of a similar cantilever beam. Yet, if it then gives the same results as the experimental results from a damaged cantilever beam, can we trust the finite-element model to simulate other damaged cantilever beams? I would be interested in hearing your thoughts, feel free to leave your comments and ideas on our Facebook page.

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