Simulating the Perfect Pint

Despite the intense amount of calculations, simulations and prototypes, some times you need a little luck when it comes to product design. Today marks St. Patrick’s Day, where people all around the world celebrate by wearing green, feeling lucky and enjoying traditional Irish food.  It’s also in the midst of the University of Missouri’s Engineers’ Week celebration, which has been an annual tradition since 1903.

Another way to commemorate the day is with a pint of Guinness. Though it seems this stout is at the center of a small controversy: Do the bubbles in the glass rise or sink? Fabrice Schlegel, an applications engineer at COMSOL, decided to settle this dispute with COMSOL Multiphysics in the post “Model How the Bubbles in a Glass of Stout Beer Sink, Not Rise.”

“It turns out that the dynamics between gas and bubbles have very important applications in many industries, such as the food, chemical and biopharmaceutical industries. Bubble dynamics is also a very prevalent subject in academia,” he writes.

To solve this problem, Schlegel used the Bubbly Flow interface in the software’s CFD (computational fluid dynamics) module. It solves the problem using Navier-Stokes and mass conservation equations. He also accounts for the glass’ shape, creating a fully structured mesh for the pint.

You can see Schelgel’s full calculations and results on the COMSOL Blog.