Altair® Flux® 2024.1 Release Highlights
Altair EmployeeLet’s have a look at the key features and improvements of Altair® Flux® 2024.1
Especially in 3D, SimLab’s interface offers a great experience to Flux users. With every version, new modeling capabilities are added, that let you take advantage of the full power of the Flux solver in an easy-to-use interface.
MEDIUM AND HIGH VOLTAGE EQUIPMENT DESIGN WITH ELECTROSTATIC STUDIES
Altair Flux is widely used to optimze medium and high voltage equipment. Dielectric studies allow to evaluate the risks of breakdowns and to decide on the right shapes of conductors and insulating parts. Thanks to simulation, the designer can ensure safety while reducing the size of the product. Already available for 3D studies, electrostatics analysis is now also in 2D and for axisymetrical modeling in SimLab. Both linear and non-linear models can be considered for insulating materials. You can impose the electric potential or an electric charge on the boundaries, from which the electric field distribution will be evaluated in space.
Be ready for easy set-up of 2D electrostatic studies
EXPLORING MORE WITH 3D MAGNETIC SIMULATIONS
Magnetostatics, steady-state AC and transient, all of them are now available in SimLab. With 2024.1 version, the modeling capabilities are extended for you to go faster and further with Flux simulations.
A new tool to create a 3D motor model from a 2D sketch or a 2D CAD has been added. It allows you to very quickly generate the geometry with or without skewing. You can also choose to represent the whole motor or only a portion of it depending on the periodicities.
If you want to benefit from the power of non-meshed coils, new tools are available to extract the midline of CAD parts, generate a set of points and create the corresponding non-meshed coils.
A 3D motor model generated from a 2D sketch in just a few clicks.
Thin regions in AC and transient have been added. Such modeling tehcnique allows to replace flat volumes by surface models. It saves a lot of volumic mesh elements, accelerates the solving, while keeping a good accuracy to represent airgaps, insulating regions or thin conductors with eddy currents.
For movement consideration, all options are now there to consider the coupling with any mechanical load. At each time step of a transient simulation, a kinematic equation is solved taking into account the characteristics of your motor or actuator, as well as any spring, mass or resisitve load attached to its moving parts.
GO MULTIPHYSICS !
Having specialized solvers all accessible from the same interface definitely helps running multiphysics studies. This is one of the key advantages of SimLab.
This version brings enhanced tools to compute spatial joule and iron losses for mapping to thermal and CFD solutions. For example, in transient, you can easily extract and send the average value of the losses over a selected period of time.
For NVH analysis purposes, a new option is offered to execute engine-order based force computations. Additionaly, you have now full support for skewed geometry. Thanks to Flux skew solver, based on a 2,5D approach, you can save time by computing the forces on 2D slices, instead of solving a full 3D model. An automated procedure is provided to apply those forces as loads of a vibration analysis.
Both noise and temperature in motors are strongly influenced by the high frequencies you find in the currents generated by PWM control. They generate higher losses in iron and conductors. It also introduces additionnal harmonic content in the forces that can make the motor more noisy. In transient magnetic solution, you can define a voltage or a current source using tables varying with time. You can then import currents that have been calculated in system simulators like PSIM, and directly get an evaluation of the impact of PWM.
Exporting forces from transient simulation of a skewed motor towards NVH analysis
EFFICIENT JOULE LOSSES EXTRACTION IN POWER CONNECTIONS
Whether for dealing with the power connections in a power converter or for designing power busbars, SimLab is offering a specific application, based on the PEEC method for a very efficient evaluation of losses in conductors, without the need for meshing the air. This is a significant gain in the model set-up but also in the solving time.
In situations where the frequency is high enough for the skin depth to be very small compared to the conductor thickness, the surface impedance method can be used. The currents are then evaluated at the surface of the conductors, which is then providing less constraints for the mesh and faster simulation.
Current density distribution in a power connector.
AND ALSO
- Enhanced automated motor meshing functionality for easier and more precise mesh
- Mesh validation checking before solving
- New non-linear model of permanent magnets that directly uses the parameters of manufacturers’ datasheets.
- Direct access to Flux videos from the help documentation to support you with How Tos and Tip & Tricks for an efficient use of Flux: New Videos page
Discover these improvements in more detail by looking at the Release Notes of Altair® Flux® 2024.1
You can also find the full documentation online:
Altair® Flux® and Altair® Simlab®can be downloaded on the Altair One Marketplace (with your account) here.
Enjoy Altair® Flux® 2024 version!
If you want to know more about Altair® FluxMotor® and its new features, look at the Release Notes.
Yann Le Floch - VP – Program Manager Flux®
Vincent Leconte - Senior Director Electrification Solutions