EM Simulation Advance Helps Electrical Machinery Designers

By DE Editors

Vector Fields (Aurora, IL), a part of Cobham plc, extended the accuracy of its Opera electromagnetic (EM) simulator for electrical machinery applications with a new finite-element hysteresis solver for soft magnetic materials.

The new Hysteresis Solver provides designers of motors, generators, and other electrical machinery with an accurate means of accounting for losses and predicting performance changes due to hysteresis effects in the specialty electrical steels that are increasingly being used to enhance machine efficiency.

In the drive toward higher efficiencies, Vector Fields’ new hysteresis solver tool provides the means for designers to accurately simulate the dynamic performance of more efficient ferromagnetic alloy materials for laminations.

The hysteresis solver is available as part of the general-purpose Opera simulation toolsuite for static and transient electromagnetic design, or in Vector Fields’  application-specific tool for motor and generator design — Opera Electrical Machines Environment. Among the product sectors that can be enhanced using the tool are dynamic electrical machinery such as motors and generators,  as well as actuators and transformers. The new capabilities of Opera are also expected to appeal to the specialist segment of the motor market, which manufactures hysteresis motors and brakes.

Vector Fields’ new Hysteresis Solver is based on actual measured BH (magnetic induction, and applied field) characteristics. The tool is provided with ready-to-use characteristics for common silicon steel materials. The new hysteresis solver complements Vector Fields’ long-standing DEMAG electromagnetic modeling software for simulating the characteristics of permanent or hard magnet materials.

An Opera extension offers EM design automation, enabling FEA modeling of static and time-varying electromagnetic fields. Opera also provides the complete toolchain for electromagnetic design, simulation, and analysis of results, for use on 32-  or 64-bit Windows and Linux platforms. The preprocessing environment for creating design models (or importing them from CAD programs), also offers a finite element analysis (FEA) solver from our range. Three generic solvers are optionally available.

For more information on Opera,  contact Vector Fields, Inc.

Sources:  Press materials received from the company and additional information gleaned from the company’s website.