Coupled magnetic-thermal fields analysis using an adaptive single-mesh method

This paper proposes a coupled finite element analysis of magnetic-thermal fields using an adaptive single-mesh method. To avoid errors from the data transfer and the mesh reconstruction due to different mesh requirements for the magnetic and thermal analysis, this proposed method built single mesh for both analyses. The results of the coupled parameters were transmitted through the single mesh between magnetic and thermal fields. According to the characteristics of the magnetic and the thermal distribution, the master-slave node method was employed to simplify the original element matrix into the magnetic and the thermal matrices, where slave nodes were no longer solved in the solving process. Results of the slave nodes were expressed by their mater nodes using weight coefficients to regain the results of the original element matrix. A permanent magnet machine was introduced to validate the proposed method with both the commercial software and the experimental tests. Compared to the commercial software, the time cost was reduced by more than 8.0% when a higher accuracy of the thermal analysis was obtained.