Personal Computer Design Software for Magnetic Analysis and Dynamic Simulation of a Two-Valve Solenoid Actuator

Summary from only given, as follows. To improve the performance of solenoid valves, it is essential to understand the effect of magnetic material properties and geometry in their design. A Macintosh computer program is developed for simulating and predicting on a personal computer the performance of two-valve solenoid actuators. In order to make the software applicable it personal computers, special attention must be paid to finite element mesh generation and computational efficiency in general. For this purpose, linear triangular coordinates and a variable bandwidth Choleski decomposition are applied for solution of the magnetic field. All magnetic properties can be graphically displayed on the CRT with color and most design parameters can be interactively changed for time effective analysis. The program is composed of two modules: a finite element module for magnetic field analysis and force calculations, and a dynamic simulation module which predicts The effects of specific magnetic designs on solenoid opening and closing dynamic performance.