Electro Thermal Systems
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 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 software. More importantly, the geometry can then be optimized using the
sophisticated parametric tools built into the software. These software tools have
been used to solve tough industrial problems for over 20 years.