Computer-Aided Design of Electric Drives with FEA Software

The rapid development of new technologies in recent years leads to a significant reduction in time-to-market. It requires a significant increase in research and development expenditure or a change in the design process. Such a change was the introduction of virtual prototyping techniques, i.e.: Finite Element Analysis (FEA). Initially, FEA was limited to mechanics, however, the introduction of multi-domain simulation, allows to study other physical phenomena, such as thermal or electromagnetic, which are of interest to us in this case. Often in commercial applications, time pressure limits the scope of research for an optimal solution to shorten the research time, which leads to suboptimal solutions. In the case presented in the paper, virtual prototyping techniques were used in the design process of the BLDC direct drive using FEA techniques, the main criterion of which was to shorten the design time while maintaining a wide range of tests and high test accuracy. The proposed methodology assumes using 2D simulations for approximate tests and then accurate 3D simulations only for selected, most promising configurations. Approximate 2D tests are several times faster than 3D tests, which means that it can be tested significantly more configurations at the same time, which increases the chance of finding the global optimum of the structure. The use of FEA 3D tests for selected constructions significantly improves the accuracy of the results obtained and allows for the final selection of the best solution. The example presented in the paper allowed for the design of the BLDC motor, taking into account the testing of 31 different BLDC drive configurations, and thus determining its optimal design, confirmed by the construction of the final prototype.