Ian Lyttle, Benjamin Pulido - Schneider Electric

at MpCCI UF 2007

MpCCI has become an indispensable tool for multi-physics simulations, allowing for co-simulation using software tools native to each set of physics. Furthermore, the open architecture of MpCCI offers considerable possibilities for customization, permitting optimized solutions for specific classes of problems.

At present, MpCCI is used principally by specialists who have training and experience with MpCCI. Greater use of the tool can be made, for example, if an everyday user of thermal-analysis software can work with an everyday user of electromagnetics-analysis software to make a co-simulation, without being an everyday user of MpCCI.

Much of the co-simulation community is motivated by fluid-structure interaction (FSI) modeling, where surface regions are coupled between a fluid simulation and a structural simulation. However, at Schneider Electric we are concerned with problems where volume regions are coupled to each other. In this work, we consider problems where an electromagnetics simulation is coupled to a thermal simulation. For electrical-distribution equipment, the electromagnetics simulation calculates volume-based Joule (resistive) heating, based on temperature-dependent electrical resistivity. Accordingly, the thermal simulation calculates the volume-based temperature, based on the Joule heating. For this work, we use FLUX (offered by Cedrat) as our electromagnetics simulation tool; we use ICEPAK or FLUENT (offered by Ansys) as our thermal simulation tool; we use MpCCI as our coupling tool.