The new release of LoudSoft's FINECone 2020 software is a welcome and important update for the loudspeaker industry. LoudSoft seems to have listened to its customers and added a new Geometry Modeler, which makes simulating cone frequency response much easier for engineers using FINECone. FINECone is an acoustic Finite Element dome/cone simulation application to assist on the design of new drivers, calculating frequency responses and detecting problems in existing designs.
The new release of LoudSoft's FINECone 2020 software is a welcome and important update for the loudspeaker industry. FINECone is an acoustic Finite Element dome/cone simulation application to assist on the design of new drivers, calculating frequency responses and detecting problems in existing designs. High accuracy calculations in FINECone only take 5-30 seconds, and the extensive Material Database allows streamlining the whole development and production process.
In the new FINECone 2020 software release, LoudSoft seems to have listened to its customers and added a new Geometry Modeler, which makes simulating cone frequency response much easier for engineers using FINECone.
Until now it has been difficult to create a suitable DXF (CAD) file, which was accurate enough to be used directly for acoustical Finite Element Analysis (FEM) in FINECone. Now, the newly added Geometry Modeler makes it incredibly simple to create the geometry due to the new Adaptive feature.
Figure 1: These are screenshots of the FINECone 2020 cone geometry modeler.
As soon as a dimension is entered on the right side, the Geometry is instantly updated on the left side (see Figure 1). LoudSoft has made a small video showing how it works which you can view here: https://youtu.be/EJ7rDMYz9UE.
And since the initial release of FINECone 2020 with the new Geometry Modeler, LoudSoft already has added a new unique feature: Users can now perform multiple simulations and optimizations in FINECone while keeping all Geometry data. FINECone will ask if you want to continue with the changes you have just made to the previous geometry. There is no limit to the number of iterations you can perform this way. When saving the new geometry, FINECone will suggest the previous file name with added iteration number, i.e. My Cone Design (2). The numbering will continue up to 999.
Besides a number of improved features and refined calculations, LoudSoft has also updated the way you can import and extract lumped Thiele-Small (T-S) parameters from the FEM calculation. This includes Le1, Le2 and Rp used for modeling the impedance at high frequencies. These are now included in T-S parameter text files from FINE R+D, and other systems.
Figure 2: These curves compare the actual cone measurements (red curve) with a Comsol (green curve) cone simulation, and the FINECone 2020 simulation (blue curve).
Today, many engineers use COMSOL for acoustic simulations. This great tool is extremely powerful, however a number of users have found that frequency response simulations of round drivers can be done in FINECone much faster and simpler at a fraction of the cost of COMSOL. In addition the accuracy of FINECone is amazing even compared to other FEM software. Figure 2 shows measurement and simulation results comparing COMSOL and FINECone. The FINECone simulation of a typical 6.5” woofer is even closer to the real measurement than COMSOL, thanks to the advanced frequency-dependent loss factor, which has been refined through the 20 years FINECone has been on the market. www.loudsoft.com. VC
