This blog presents an Ansys Maxwell workshop using the Eddy Current solver with a simple example of a disk placed above a coil. The coil induces eddy currents in the disk, resulting in ohmic losses. In this setup, a sinusoidal 500 Hz current is applied to an eight-turn spiral coil placed beneath a cast iron disk.
3D Geometry:
The final geometry is shown below. The coil, created using a user-defined primitive, is assigned copper, while the disk is assigned iron.
A current excitation of 125 A (solid type) is applied to the coil terminal.
For the cast iron plate, the calculated skin depth is approximately 0.24 cm. To resolve the skin depth effectively without generating too many elements, additional surfaces were created at depths of 0.125 cm and 0.25 cm. This ensures at least two layers of mesh elements in the skin depth region.
The mesh on the disk shows the effect of adaptive meshing, with a denser mesh near the bottom of the disk where the additional layers were inserted.
Ohmic Loss Calculation:
Using the fields calculator, the ohmic loss in the disk is calculated to be approximately 254 W.
The current density vector plot and the ohmic loss distribution on the disk are shown below:
Current density vector plot
Ohmic loss distribution on the disk
The video below walks through all the steps in detail, and the simulation model is available in the downloadable resources.
Downloadable Resources
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