Hydrogenerators Finite Element Modeling with Flux

In this article, appearing in the Fall 2020 issue of Engine + Powertrain Technology International, Altair outlines how a holistic approach to propulsion system design is enabling manufacturers to meet performance requirements while maximizing vehicle range.

Simulation helps you validate at the end of a product design cycle, but deployed early and throughout a development process, it can actually allow you to explore more potential solutions, collaborate more effectively and optimize the design for cost, performance, weight, and other important criteria. This infographic provides a framework for developing and implementing your own simulation-driven process to help you produce more efficient e-motors and shorten development times.

Nowadays, it is more and more difficult to design electro-technique devices without having a look at thermal stress. In more and more applications (more electric vehicles, more electric aircrafts, …) designers need to reduce weight, cost, increase efficiency, and keep the same security factor. One possibility is to increase current for the same device, needing to check how to draw away the heat. This is why the classical approximations need to be cross checked with complementary analysis. These new tools have to be rapid and accurate in order to run parametric and even optimization analysis. There is also a need for fast model in order to check robustness versus driving cycles. The goal in this article is to review rapidly the different methods available, depending on the accuracy required and the solving speed. The method includes equivalent thermal circuits, Finite elements methods and CFD analysis.

Development tools and methods, such as simulation, are increasingly important to face and address the pressure of innovation. As an example, for successful new design methods and to show how simulation tools are used, Altair developed a virtual demonstrator based on a cobot application. This complex machine interacts with a human operator as the ultimate smart manufacturing equipment - to show how challenges in modern product design can be overcome.