News
We are very proud to announce the release of a new version of our software, v7.0. We have accomplished a number of new, great improvements and we would like to share them with you.
We want to make sure that you are aware of the many major and minor enhancements in our program, which now includes:
1- New Material Manager
The major enhancement to ELECTRO is a new Material Manager. This new feature will allow the designer to create custom material libraries which can be shared with different models and subsequent designs. These libraries are easily loaded within an existing design and can be added to the Model Materials trivially.
In addition, materials curves can now be specified by formula. So, for example, you could specify that the current density is related to the electric field squared. The curves are displayed graphically if a material is defined by a formula.
These libraries can be shared with other colleagues using any INTEGRATED software.
2- Full Impulse Wave Transient Sources
Full Impulse Wave transient sources can be defined in v7.0 of INTEGRATED’s ELECTRO and OERSTED programs. Sources of these types are commonly used to model lightning impulses for Basic Impulse Level (BIL) tests.
Transient surge waveforms are typically defined by equations of the form: V=V0 (e-αt – e-βt) which produce a sharp rise to a crest value followed by a slow decay. However, impulse test signals are usually specified by the required peak value, and the time to reach crest and time to decay to half of crest value.
INTEGRATED’s Full Impulse Wave transient source functions allow users the freedom to enter impulse parameters directly without the need of first solving for the required defining equation.
3- Meniscus Calculation for Ion and Electron Beam Extraction in LORENTZ-2D
Computer modeling of charge particle beam is important part in investigation of processes that take place in different electro-physical equipments. The aim of these simulations is always to investigate the charge particle beam quality, which makes optimization for a specific application possible.
Ray-tracing codes are standard tools for the design of steady-state, high-current electron guns. The programs represent a beam by a finite number Np of model particles. The particles follow the trajectories of individual electrons but carry a fraction 1/Np of the beam charge and current. The first stage in the iterative procedure is to calculate applied electric and magnetic fields and to trace the model-particle orbits, assigning beam charge and current to the mesh. The fields are updated to reflect the beam contributions, and then orbits are recalculated. With several iteration cycles and proper averaging, the fields and orbits converge to a self-consistent solution.
The design of ion guns with plasma sources poses an additional challenge. While the source shape for electron extraction from a thermionic cathode is specified, the surface for ion extraction from a freely expanding plasma is not known in advance. The surface position is determined by the balance between incoming ion flux and space-charge-limited current density. For a given extractor geometry, there is a unique surface shape that simultaneously satisfies the Child law and ensures that the space-charge-limited current density is uniform.
Meniscus calculation is a new method for numerical modeling of extraction of high-current ion beams from a plasma source. Starting from an initial estimate, the flexible mesh is shifted to achieve uniform flux over the emission surface. The approach achieves high accuracy and has the versatility to handle complex emission surfaces in gridded guns. In contrast to trial-and-error approaches, the method proceeds directly to the optimum solution. The technique can also be applied to determine cathode shapes for uniform flux electron guns. The program automatically carries out the surface search.
4- New "Refine Solution" feature
The "Refine Solution" command will give you the "next refinement step" of a self adaptive solution. This can be used to incrementally refine the solution of a model or to gain confidence in the solution of a model. Starting from a solved model, you can calculate the fields or figure of merit that you are interested in. Then use the "Refine Solution" command to refine the elements and solve the model again automatically. On the refined solution, calculate the same fields or figure of merit. If the values have changed within your tolerance, you know can have confidence in your solution. If the change in value is too high, use the “Refine Solution” command again, or solve the model to a higher self-adaptive accuracy, to obtain a more accurate solution.
5- Eddy currents model winding model skin and proximity effects in AC Coils
In many AC coils conductor current density is not uniformly distributed because of skin and proximity effects. Our program now provides users the ability to assign Eddy Current Windings to accurately simulate these effects.
Note you can assign either Voltage or Current driven windings with the option of modeling source or load impedances using the External Load selection.
6- Self-adaptive 3D FEM: quick converge, with less iterations.
The self-adaptative 3D FEM has been significantly enhanced. The practical limitation for this updated feature is the amount of RAM available.
7- Better use of memory: the program solves larger FEM problems, faster.
The FEM solver in 3D is now capable of solving larger 3D problems.
8- More robust and faster meshing in 3D.
The meshing in 3D is far more robust and considerably faster.
9- New Geometry Define Surfaces On Plane and Define Planar Surface commands.
10- New Scale Periodic Length for Periodic model when Parametric Geometry Scale is used.
11- New variable "L" for length to program command line parser.
12- Speed up of "Rotate" in 3D, by approximately four times.
13- Modify Volume Currents assignment in AMPERES and FARADAY, using sweep information. The user can toggle the Volume Current flow direction.
14- New support to enable or disable visibility for FEM bounding box. This makes the FEM 3D bounding box transparent if required.
15- Remove Parametric Scale Source one scale factor per step restriction.
16- New hot keys to dynamically change work plane depth. Ctrl+F9 and Ctrl+F10 to decrement and increment work plane depth. Shift+F9 can be used to adjust the step size.
17- In OERSTED, new scale coil resistance and scale coil turns to parametric.
18- New scale eddy winding current and change eddy winding current phase to parametric, also in OERSTED.
19- Many small bugs fixed.
20- Some enhancements in SINGULA:
- FFT technique for solving the electrical-large problems (above 50,000 unknowns).
- New direct solver using Intel Lapack library, OpenMP technique and Block LU decomposition method (less than 100,000 unknowns).
- Calculation of the Phase Center of the antenna
