Thermal Applications

Virtually all electrical devices generate heat in order to operate. In some cases this heat is unwanted such as energy lost in motors or printed circuits boards. For some special cases heating of parts is desirable for heat treatment applications. Some specific cases are induction hardening and part forming.

More recently the need for coupling magnetic, electric, and thermal fields has been addressed with the addition of software tools that deal with these multiphysics applications. Thus heat generated by conduction loss or eddy currents can be the source for thermal analysis.

Integrated’s advanced electromagnetic simulation and thermal simulation tools are state of the art. Typically, the Boundary Element Method (BEM) can be employed for the electrical analysis and the Finite Element Method (FEM) for the thermal analysis. This enables the inherent advantage of boundary elements to be exploited for electrical problems to deal with the free space around the structure. The generality of the finite element method is then exploited to cater to transient and non linear parts of the thermal analysis.

Problem geometries can be directly imported from all the major CAD vendors or created within the simulation software. More importantly, the geometry can then be optimized using the sophisticated parametric tools built into the software. These simulation software tools have been used to solve tough industrial problems for over 25 years.