System Level and Simulations

Imagination, experience and available tools set the boundaries for the discovery of optimal, low-risk solutions. Join forces and use new tools to speed up the momentum and to bring in new inputs. This can give you a very essential competitive edge with today’s challenging targets and tough time schedules.

Problem Solving

Mechancial simulation You have the hands-on experience and the product know-how. Nevertheless, you might need ‘emergency actions’ and additional know-how. A traditional approach would be to outsource well-defined work-packages. Better is to combine this with a mentorship plan that ensures that your company’s competence and hands-on experience prosper instead of leave your company.

Colibri can assist you with our multi-disciplinary competence base and experience in addressing problems where non-standard solutions and detective work are needed. As your mentor we can:

Assist and guide you in solving your acute problems while bearing the long-term goals in mind
Base the work on your own important hands-on experience
Bring in new ideas, methodologies, and know-how
Leverage your own work in a time and resource efficient way
Create a freedom of action by catalyzing activities at your location

This allow you to quickly address the tougher tasks while ensuring that competence remains within your company. You become better prepared to act more forcefully in the future.

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Multiphysics Simulations

An important and powerful tool when solving problems and creating understanding is computerized simulations. Resources spent on simulations often turn out to be well spent.

Piezoelectric simulation Simulations complement the conventional experimental trial-and-error approach well. It extrapolates measured scalar quantities into a fully three-dimensional insight into a system’s actual behavior. This creates countless possibilities to quickly study hypotheses, performance, failure modes, sensitivity to variations in production, etc., in a more flexible way than possible if relying only on experiments. In fact, simulations can be treated as a complementing experimental equipment.

Among the most general and powerful simulation procedures is the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) with which static, transient, modal and harmonic problems can be studied non-linearly. Today’s commercial programs can address the full interaction between domains such as structural, thermal, electric, magnetic, fluidic, acoustic, etc. Macros and subprograms broaden the horizon even further. MEMS, with their small size that often eludes intuition and require large, resource-consuming experimental equipment, exemplify that multiphysics FEA has a natural ‘Raison d'être’.

To correctly use simulations to their fullest potential is complex and takes a long time to master. The large amount of generated information, which is based on your assumptions, needs to be interpreted and also calibrated with reality now and then (deviations create opportunities to expand the understanding). It is essential to address these, often neglected, pre-analysis and post-analysis phases efficiently.

Colibri can assist you with our experience in multiphysics simulations. As your mentor we can:

Evaluate your approach, assumptions, experimental strategy, choice of tools, etc. (pre-analysis)
Analyze the implication of the results and their interplay with reality, measurements and understanding, on a sub-component and system level (post-analysis)
Perform the more complicated simulations ourselves
Create models that can be handed over to you
Be a discussion partner for your analysis work

Colibri’s use of simulations is focused at solving problems and at creating understanding. We use FEA if needed, but not more extensively than motivated. This gives a freedom to use the best available approach and tools for each task, and to approach problems in unconventional ways if needed. We target at presenting the results in the form of an understanding described in words and not just via colorful viewgraphs.

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