Isogeometric Analysis and Harmonic Stator-Rotor Coupling for Simulating Electric Machines

TL;DR

This paper introduces an Isogeometric Analysis approach with harmonic coupling for simulating electric machines, offering exact geometric representation of the air gap and improved accuracy over classical finite element methods.

Contribution

The work develops a novel Isogeometric Analysis method with harmonic stator-rotor coupling, enabling precise geometry modeling and independent domain construction for electric machine simulation.

Findings

Exact representation of circular arcs reduces geometric errors.

The method achieves comparable or improved accuracy compared to classical finite element methods.

Efficient coupling of independent domains via harmonic basis functions.

Abstract

This work proposes Isogeometric Analysis as an alternative to classical finite elements for simulating electric machines. Through the spline-based Isogeometric discretization it is possible to parametrize the circular arcs exactly, thereby avoiding any geometrical error in the representation of the air gap where a high accuracy is mandatory. To increase the generality of the method, and to allow rotation, the rotor and the stator computational domains are constructed independently as multipatch entities. The two subdomains are then coupled using harmonic basis functions at the interface which gives rise to a saddle-point problem. The properties of Isogeometric Analysis combined with harmonic stator-rotor coupling are presented. The results and performance of the new approach are compared to the ones for a classical finite element method using a permanent magnet synchronous machine as an example.