Altair® Flux® 2022.2 Release Highlights
Altair EmployeeLet’s have a look at the key features and improvements of Altair® Flux® 2022.2!
BRINGING FLUX INTO THE INTUITIVE AND POWERFUL MULTIPHYSICS SIMLAB INTERFACE
A lot of new capabilities have been added to SimLab interface to run Flux computations, increasing its usability for various physics. 3D Electrostatics have now the streamer criterion included in the post-processing, which helps evaluating the risks of dielectric breakdowns. For the simulation of motors, enhancements in the sketching and the meshing tools have been brought. You will also find a fully embedded circuit descriptor to enter any circuit topology. From EM calculations to acoutics, a complete process for NVH analysis of electric machines is available, completely inside SimLab, providing a really seamless workflow. So is now the one-way coupling of Flux with AcuSolve for CFD to evaluate the cooling of electric machines. SimLab is now definitely the way to go for eMotor multiphysics analysis.
SimLab now embeds a circuit descriptor
SIMULATING SKEWED ELECTRIC MACHINES
Skewing the rotors of electric machines is a well known practice to reduce torque ripples and vibrations. In terms of simulation, although this leads to a 3D situation, a 2,5D approach can be used, based on the analysis of multiple 2D slices. Such an automated process has been available for a long time in Flux, but was limited to situations where the skewing was continuous. Now, step-skew geometries can be considered, and you can decide the thickness and the rotation angle for each slice independently, meaning that you can simulate “zigzag” skew. In addition, it is possible to export the forces coming from each slice as inputs for NVH computations.
Fast 2D computations and 3D post-processing for a step-skewed rotor.
ACCURATE EVALUATION OF ELECTRIC DRIVES EFFICIENCIES
To compute the efficiency of an electric drive, the power converter, the electric machine and the control need to be considered. This can be done by coupling Flux with system level tools like Activate. A new link based on look-up tables has been developped, allowing for considering an electric machine in the system it belongs to, in a more easy and precise way. The same kind of link is also available with PSIM, which is a new comer in the Altair familly suite, to compute the efficiencies of power converters.
Computing the efficiency map of a complete motor drive
GOING FURTHER AND FASTER WITH FREE SHAPE OPTIMIZATION
Using free shape optimization allows to optimize any electromechanical device without any parameterization. Already available in previous Flux versions, it has been improved with 2022.2, bringing a more accurate and faster evaluation of the electromagnetic torque. The algorithm also now allows for automatic remeshing during the optimization process, to avoid too much distortion of the mesh. This leads to a very efficient way to search for lightweight topologies and find truly innovative designs.
Without Remeshing With remeshing
CALCULATING IRON LOSSES WITH HIGHER ACCURACY
The so-called LS (Loss Surface) model has proven to be a very performant one to predict iron losses, with the ability to keep good accuracy even when considering a wide range of frequencies. Users have now the possibility of creating the LS model of their own material from measurements, through an identification process. Improvements of this workflow have been brought in this new version for faster identification and wider applicability to various electrical sheets.
Good correspondence between measurements and LS Model
AND ALSO:
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Fast mode in FeMT to compute efficiency maps quicker, using tables instead of full transient simulations
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Easy way to distribute Flux parametric studies on Windows on a local machine
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Possibility to export data from Altair’s Material Data Center where 300 references from Bomatec have been added.
Discover these improvements in more detail by looking at the Release Notes of Altair® Flux® 2022.2
You can also find the full documentation online:
Altair® Flux® can be downloaded on the Altair One Marketplace (with your account) here.
Enjoy Altair® Flux® 2022.2 version!
If you want to know more about Altair® FluxMotor® and its new features, look at the Release Notes.
Yann Le Floch - Senior Program Manager Flux®
Vincent Leconte - Senior Director of Global Business Development, Electromechanical Solutions