Evaluation of Movement Facilitating Techniques for Finite Element Analysis of Magnetically Geared Electrical Machines

The simulation of magnetically geared electrical machines using the finite element method is an especially demanding task when movement has to be considered. Several methods that facilitate movement exist. In this paper, two of these methods, the macro air-gap element (AGE) and the moving band (MB) are applied in a time-stepped static simulation of a magnetically geared machine (MGM). The methods are evaluated in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency, vitally important factors for numerical optimization. The implementation of both methods exploit the multi-core architecture of modern CPUs to solve several steps in parallel, drastically reducing the simulation time. Nevertheless, the computational cost of the AGE is prohibitively high in the simulation of MGMs. The MB is computationally efficient and good accuracy can be achieved using a multilayer approach.