High Voltage and Electric Field Applications
Design of high voltage equipment and other devices utilizing electric fields require
accurate calculation of the electrical stress in order to reduce flashover or meet many other
design criteria. Unlike most other physical disciplines, often a very large air space around
the electrical device has to be included in the model. Thus, special modeling techniques like
the Boundary Element Method have been developed which makes the solution of these very
challenging problems a simple matter.
Dividing 3D space up into millions of brick or tetrahedra becomes a thing of the past.
Instead, the surfaces of the electrical components are the only places requiring
discretization. The simulation methods employed by INTEGRATED have to be experienced to be
appreciated.
The geometry of the problem can be created with the geometric modeler built into the
electric field solvers or can be imported from any of the major CAD vendors.
More importantly, the geometry can be changed parametrically to optimize a design for
robustness, weight, size and, of course, cost.
If ohmic losses or dielectric losses produce heat, the heat produced may be more important to the design than
the electrical parameters as the temperature throughout the device may ultimately determine it's performance.
For such multiphysics
applications the electric field can be coupled with the thermal field to determine the
operating temperature of the device. The elegance of the Boundary Element Method for
the electrical field calculation is coupled with the standard Finite Element Method for
the thermal analysis.