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Chalmers University of Technology—the 2nd largest university in Sweden—has ordered a site license for FEMLAB, a multiphysics modeling software, in an order worth $350,000.

Stockholm, Sweden (March 8, 2004)—By purchasing a site license for FEMLAB, Chalmers University of Technology provides a total of 12,000 teachers, researchers, and students with unlimited access to this powerful scientific-modeling package. Chalmers can now increase its usage of FEMLAB and associated modules in research and education for modeling in all areas of physics. Besides FEMLAB’s core capabilities, the site licenses cover the package’s optional modules, which add application environments for modeling and simulation in the fields of structural mechanics, electromagnetics, and chemical engineering.

“With this 3-year site license for FEMLAB, we provide ourselves as well as the University of Gothenburg access to the base package, all current modules, plus all future products that COMSOL releases until April 2007,” explains Lars Andersson, license coordinator at the Department for Information Technology at Chalmers. “All our employees and students get access to this suite of software both at campus and at home. The deal brings entirely new opportunities to our classroom instruction and research.”

FEMLAB is a software package for the modeling and simulation of any physical process it is possible to describe with partial differential equations. Application interfaces make it easy for students to use. Its open and flexible environment enables advanced research on complex physical systems. The package is unique in its capabilities to model any system of coupled physical phenomena—a capability known as multiphysics, which is of great importance to researchers in their attempt to understand interconnected physics phenomena prevailing in nature.

The Microtechnology Centre (MC2) at Chalmers is one of Europe’s largest research teams working with nano and microtechnology. Indeed, FEMLAB has become an instrumental tool in their research in bioelectronics. “We use FEMLAB to study electric fields around microelectrodes used for electric manipulation of living cells as well as to study microfluidics and mass-transport,” comments doctoral student Jessica Olofsson at the Department of Physical Chemistry. “With FEMLAB and its multiphysics capabilities we can use one package instead of spending time learning several specialized tools. Because FEMLAB is so easy to use, we have been able to get started quickly with our modeling and move forward to try out new ideas. FEMLAB is an extremely valuable tool in our research.”

Chalmers currently has 10,500 students in its undergraduate engineering curriculum. IT Coordinator Lars Andersson is starting to distribute FEMLAB and the associated modules to the entire university community. Each student that purchases Chalmers Start-CD also gets a CD with FEMLAB 3 including the complete FEMLAB package and thus can install exactly the same powerful tools as teachers use. Thanks to these state-of-the-art tools, computer exercises become more instructive and realistic. Students use FEMLAB in multiple courses and so must learn only one package, giving them more time to devote to scholarly activities.

Chalmers’ commitment to equation-based modeling software for a broad audience is an example of the growing interest for this technology. Other leading institutions, such as Stanford University, KTH/The Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm) and Linköping University (Sweden), have also signed site licenses for FEMLAB. Chalmers, however, is the first with a 3-year commitment, one that covers the complete line of engineering software from COMSOL.

Founded in 1829, Chalmers University of Technology today offers Ph.D. and Licentiate course programs as well as undergraduate and graduate programs in engineering, architecture, and science. Approximately 13,100 people work and study at Chalmers, including more than 10,500 undergraduates. Each year the university awards roughly 300 Ph.D. and Licentiate degrees as well as 760 M.Sc. and M.Arch. degrees.

FEMLAB – which stands for Finite Element Modeling Laboratory – is an advanced software package for the modeling and simulation of any physical process described with partial differential equations. The latest version, FEMLAB 3.0, features high-performance state-of-the-art solvers that address extremely large problems yet quickly yield accurate results. Working in an easy-to-use graphical interface or from a command line, users choose from several ways to describe their problems in 1D, 2D and 3D. A particular strength of the package is its PDE modeling capability, whereby it can link and solve coupled equations from varied fields such as structural mechanics, electromagnetics, fluid flow, and chemistry – all in the same model and all at the same time. These and many other features make FEMLAB 3.0 an unprecedented modeling environment for research, product development and education.

Founded in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1986, COMSOL has grown to include US offices in Burlington, MA and Los Angeles, CA. Internationally, the firm has operations in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Full details about the company and its products are available at www.comsol.com.