Open-source software for electrical engineering applications requiring consideration of electrodynamics: elecode

TL;DR

elecode is an open-source software tool for electrical engineering that uniquely combines electromagnetic modeling, wire simulation, and user-friendly interfaces, supporting diverse applications like power engineering and lightning simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a versatile open-source platform with advanced wire modeling and flexible interfaces, expanding capabilities beyond existing FDTD-based tools.

Findings

Successfully implemented wire modeling techniques for complex objects

Provides a user-friendly GUI for model modification

Supports diverse electrical engineering simulations including lightning and grounding

Abstract

The work presents elecode, open-source software for various electrical engineering applications that require considering electromagnetic processes. The primary focus of the software is power engineering applications. However, the software does not impose any specific limitations preventing other uses. In contrast to other open-source software based on the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) method, elecode implements various thin wire modeling techniques which allow simulating complex objects consisting of wires. In addition, implemented graphical user interface (GUI) helps modify models conveniently. The software provides auxiliary numerical methods for simulations and measurements of the electrical soil properties, allows conducting lightning-related simulations (including those involving isolation breakdown models), and calculations of grounding characteristics. The part of the code responsible for FDTD simulations is well tested in previous works. Recently, the code was rewritten in order to add a convenient interface for using it as a library, command-line program, or GUI program. Finally, the code was released under an open-source license. The main capabilities of the software are described in the work. Several simulation examples covering main software features are presented. elecode is available at https://gitlab.com/dmika/elecode.