Transient simulation of an electrical rotating machine achieved through model order reduction

Model order reduction (MOR) methods are more and more applied on many different fields of physics in order to reduce the number of unknowns and thus the computational time of large-scale systems. However, their application is quite recent in the field of computational electromagnetics. In the case of electrical machine, the numerical model has to take into account the nonlinear behaviour of ferromagnetic materials, motion of the rotor, circuit equations and mechanical coupling. In this context, we propose to apply the proper orthogonal decomposition combined with the (Discrete) empirical interpolation method in order to reduce the computation time required to study the start-up of an electrical machine until it reaches the steady state. An empirical offline/online approach based on electrical engineering is proposed in order to build an efficient reduced model accurate on the whole operating range. Finally, a 2D example of a synchronous machine is studied with a reduced model deduced from the proposed approach. © 2016, The Author(s).