Matlab与ANSYS和COMSOL等仿真产品的对比

Question

这可能是问这个问题的错误地方，但我在SE网络上找不到更好的地方。我曾经使用过Matlab和Ansys，据我所知/所知，Matlab是一个编程环境，它具有执行常见数学、可视化和分析操作的功能。您主要以文本方式编写程序(.m文件)或使用Simulink生成流程图(基于模型的开发)。另一方面，Ansys是一个主要的模拟环境，在这个环境中，可以通过GUI (3D模型、物理域、配置、显示设置)完成相当多的工作，并且您可以在模拟引擎中的不同点添加方程，以便修改模拟流程。

我所理解的一切都是粗略的，只是一个概述。谁能给我一个合适的Matlab和Ansys (或任何其他模拟产品，如COMSOL)之间的真实比较，让我们了解何时使用哪个系统，以及每个系统的弱点。

Answer 1

我没有使用过Ansys，但Ansys经常被拿来和Comsol相比，我使用Comsol和Matlab已经有很多年了。

Matlab：

• 编程语言和运行该语言的环境。这意味着它可以做任何事情(任何其他编程语言都可以做)。与其他语言相比，它的亮点是什么？

- Hundreds of built-in functions to work with Matrices. For example, in one project I needed to do simple matrix algebra (add, multiply, scale matrices), and also needed singular value decomposition. SVD is not something you could write in 50 lines of code, so I needed a ready-made library. At the time I used a library for Java, and wrote my own code for representing matrices and doing matrix algebra on them. That's a few hundreds of lines of code. Had I used Matlab, it would have been about ten lines of code, because all of it is there. I would have needed only to type `help svd` to find out how to use it. However, if you don't need any of that, stay away from Matlab at all costs! There are much better languages that are free.
- Great to use as a calculator that is always open on the desktop, and can do back-of-the-envelope style calculations.
- **Plotting graphs**. Many academics recommend Matlab as the tool of choice for producing publication-quality graphics. These can be exported as PDF and imported into Inkscape for further editing. The best thing is that commands for plotting a graph could be put into a script file, and then parts of it can be changed later as needed, which can save a lot of work compared to manually drawing a graph (imagine you wanted to change the axes or symbols used to present the data points).
- Personally, I also use it for curve-fitting. It has many toolboxes, one of which is a neat tool that allows me to find equations that model a set of data points.

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Comsol：

• 使用有限元方法求解复杂区域上的偏微分方程(PDE)的专用工具。这可能听起来晦涩难懂，但许多现实世界的工程需要简化到这一点。例如：

1. Finding loads, stresses and strains in civil engineering structures with complicated real-world geometry (what happens when there is gusty wind blowing onto a building or bridge?) 
2. How do currents flow in particular conductive objects?
3. Chemical reactions in various industrial reactors.
4. What is the power efficiency of a generator (magnet spinning in coil) design?
5. How to place aircon outlets in a nontrivially-shaped room to achieve both good temperature distribution and good efficiency? 
6. Comsol, as any other FEM tool that can work with arbitrary equations, can do multiphysics, which means, for example, that one could solve for chemistry of a battery, as well as the temperature and pressure, and how that feeds back into the chemical reaction (speeds up or slows down). Compared with a tool where you need to provide the equations, in Comsol, most of the things that would be needed to solve most problems are already there, and just need to be selected and applied to the geometry, which is also built inside Comsol. Also, equations of arbitrary description can be introduced.

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• 这些物理物质行为的物理描述称为PDE。
• 一旦Comsol解决了问题，数据就可以导出到Matlab中进行后处理，Matlab具有更多功能的工具来处理数据和绘制各种曲线图。