Editor’s Pick: CD-adapco Releases SPEED for Electric Machine Design

By DE Editors

Back in June, CD-adapco acquired from the University of Glasgow code for designing electric machines known as SPEED. In its acquisition announcement, CD-adapco described SPEED as a complement to its STAR CCM+ engineering physics simulation tool and to “ongoing organic developments in-houseto create a detailed 3D electromagnetic solver” for STAR-CCM+. Just recently, the company announced the 2011 version of SPEED. I found all this fascinating. Here’s why.

To start, “dimly aware” categorizes my knowledge of SPEED. Turns out it has been developed for 25 years and is used at more than 1,500 sites to create actuators, pumps, starter-generators, and all kinds of electric machines and motors for aerospace applications, hybrid and electric vehicles, refrigeration, home appliances, water pumps, fans, high-efficiency industrial drives, precision servomotor systems, and so forth.

That all means that SPEED helps you design induction motors, brushless permanent-magnet motors, DC brush motors, switched reluctance motors, synchronous reluctance motors, and, well, you get the idea. SPEED enables you to design prototypes and characterize your machine (not just machine concepts) and its drive in detail. SPEED organizes data in numerical and graphical forms, easing communications with design teams, suppliers, and clients. And it works closely with STAR CCM+ for CFD analyses as well as FEA systems.

What of SPEED version 2011? Well, with more than 350 enhancements, a quick summary is a challenge. Changes seem to cross all areas of applicability. For instance, if you design hybrid and electric vehicles, all aspects of design calculations reportedly are enhanced, and it now has “seamless design capability over the range of permanent-magnet machines and alternatives including hybrid combinations.” If your gig is compressors and pumps, improvements focus on machine geometry, loss calculations, drive control, and FEA. Anyone working with generators will find all sorts of additions intended to make that line of work easier and more efficient.

SPEED version 2011 is also interesting because of the nature of the “new features” PDF—linked to in today’s Pick of the Week write-up. First, it is comprehensive—38 pages! More important to you, in my opinion, is that it’s personal. A gentleman by the name of Tim Miller, the originator of SPEED and now a consultant to CD-adapco, wrote a good chunk of it as a letter to existing users assuring them that SPEED is in good hands. This delightful departure from the marketing norm tells me that SPEED is built with your closest input—always a good sign. Kudos to CD-adapco for the confidence to allow SPEED be SPEED.

In short, I found everything about CD-adapco’s acquisition of SPEED and the announcement of SPEED version 2011 intriguing. If you, like me, still have a long way to go to get up to speed on SPEED, today’s Pick of the Week write-up is a good place to start.

Thanks, pal.—Lockwood

Anthony J. Lockwood
Editor at Large, Desktop Engineering

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CD-adapco Releases SPEED for Electric Machine Design
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