An educational tool based on finite element method for electromagnetic study

Abstract

Electromagnetism forms a mandatory topic in the syllabus of undergraduate and graduate courses in electrical engineering. This topic involves many physical and mathematical concepts like curl, divergence, gradient for field determination and representation. These concepts are not only difficult to understand but also often lead to poor learning because of the imaginations and non-visualization of electric and magnetic fields. A correct understanding of fields and its distribution is necessary to understand the working, design and optimization of electrical machines. This paper presents a finite element method (FEM) based educational tool that allows the technical students to visualize electromagnetic (EM) fields inside the EM systems. This tool therefore provides a better understanding of the design and optimization of various electrical devices. This paper shows an example of a 2-pole linear machine to visualize the distribution of the magnetic field in a non-linear circuit. This machine extends to form a linear switched reluctance motor (LSRM) using step-by-step design and optimization procedure along with the user guide interface programmed in FEM based ANSYS Maxwell software. This motor is used as an example to visualize magnetic fields using FEM software in complex circuits and can be used as a good educational tool for students. The paper incorporates the validation of the design procedure through FEM simulations.