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Flux
Flux is a finite element software for low-frequency electromagnetic and thermal simulations. Both, 2D and 3D solutions are available...
Circuit and Kinematic Couplings
Flux is coupled to a circuit context allowing to model the sources of the devices.Flux also allow to model the movement via a kinematic coupling.
Circuit coupling: principles
Models for electric circuit components
Component for rotating machines: squirrel cage (2D)

Welcome
User guide
The user guide gives information about principles and how to use Altair® Flux® 2024.1.
What's new?
See the release notes of the last and previous versions, with the necessary information on new features.
"How to" Documents
See a list of documents to understand how to use certain features.
Altair Flux Videos
Several youtube videos about how to use Altair Flux and several tip and tricks
Flux Supervisor
The Flux supervisor allows to run projects, examples, pythons scripts; to configure user preferences; to access tools...
Flux
Flux is a finite element software for low-frequency electromagnetic and thermal simulations. Both, 2D and 3D solutions are available...
- General operation
  Here is a presentation of the Flux environment; the project management, the data management, the command language, the formulas and mathematical functions.
- Construction of a Flux project
  The construction of a Flux project consists of several stages: Geometry → Mesh → Physics → Resolution → Postprocessing; with the possibility to import a CAD file, a mesh, materials...
- Physical applications
  Flux allows to model different physical phenomena, and includes various applications (magnetic, electrical, thermal and thermal coupled).
- Circuit and Kinematic Couplings
  Flux is coupled to a circuit context allowing to model the sources of the devices.Flux also allow to model the movement via a kinematic coupling.
- Co-simulation between Flux and another software
  Flux is able to couple with several softwares allowing to model mutliphysics phenomena.
- Dedicated couplings
  Several dedicated couplings are implemented in Flux to, carry out vibro-acoustic studies, magneto-thermal studies and more.
- 3D Overlay
  Flux has predefined models for rotating machines via Overlays allowing to describe a geometry, a mesh and a physics adapted to the wished machine.
- Flux API
- How to Configure the Memory in Flux?
Flux Skew
Flux Skew is a module dedicated to the analysis of rotating electric machines with skewing, allowing a straightforward geometric and physical description in 2D and the consideration of continuous or step skewing effects.
Flux PEEC
Flux PEEC is a 3D modeling module dedicated to electrical interconnections of power electronics devices. It also provides RLC extraction and generation of SPICE-like equivalent circuits.
Material Identification
The Material Identification tool is based on the Altair Compose environment and allows determining from measurements the parameters and coefficients required to create a material in Flux.
Altair Material Datacenter (AMDC)
AMDC is a comprehensive material database maintained by Altair and partner suppliers of engineering materials. Ready-to-use, Flux-compatible models may be obtained directly from this database for a growing number of materials.
Material Manager
Flux has a material manager with its own material base.The user can create his own material base and import them into the Flux models to be studied.
Flux e-Machine Toolbox
FeMt is a application in Flux dedicated for Electric Machine which permits to compute and postprocess results like efficiency maps.
Flux Examples
See the lists of examples 2D, 3D, SKEW and PEEC with all available documents and all project and python files.
Flux in SimLab Examples
See the lists of 2D and 3D SimLab examples using the Flux and Mipse solvers, with all available documents, *.slb databases and all script files.
Mementos
See a list of Memento documents to understand certain Flux features.
Macros
Flux proposes several macros enabling doing actions that are not yet implemented in Flux.
PyFlux Documentation (Beta version)
This documentation deals with the Jython script used in Flux and allows to understand the various structures of entities and functions, and use it in user scripts for example.
Flux installation guide
This document provides instructions for Flux installation on supported platforms.
Flux Starting Guide
Several short videos to start with Flux.

Component for rotating machines: squirrel cage (2D)

The squirrel cage

The squirrel cage of an asynchronous machine is an assembly comprising metal bars connected to one another, in cylindrical form, by two end rings. (see figure below).

The squirrel cage component is a macro component (or sub-circuit ) that represents the electrical circuit of the machine squirrel cage.

Utilization

This component is available in transient applications and requires the utilization of kinematic coupling.

Squirrel cage: the electrical circuit components

The electrical circuit of a squirrel cage contains the following components:

a solid conductor for each rotor bar
a resistor and a coil between either end of each of the conductors in order to simulate the end ring.

These pieces of information are represented in the figure below.

If N is the number of the bars of the squirrel cage, the electrical circuit contains N solid conductors, 2N resistors and 2N coils.

Squirrel cage: the two types of the electrical circuit closing

The electrical circuit of a squirrel cage can be closed in two ways, depending on the machine representation mode: modeling of a part (fraction) of the machine (1/4, 1/2, …) or of the entire machine.

Thus, the closing type of an electrical circuit is linked to the boundary conditions assigned to the frontiers of the correspondent finite element domain.

cycling closing if the entire motor is described or if the considered part is physically symmetric to the neighboring parts (an even number of the poles are represented in the finite element domain),
anticyclic closing if the described part of the motor is physically antisymmetric to the neighboring parts (an odd number of poles represented).

The two types of the electrical circuit closing are represented in the figure below.

Cyclic closing: entire motor, symmetry (even number of poles)

=

Anticyclic closing: antisymmetry (odd number of poles pairs)

=

Characteristics of the squirrel cage macro component

The squirrel cage macro component is defined by four parameters:

the number of bars N, present in the fraction of the modeled motor (finite element domain)
the resistance R of the end ring part between two adjacent bars
the inductance L of the end ring part between two adjacent bars