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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...
Physical applications
Flux allows to model different physical phenomena, and includes various applications (magnetic, electrical, thermal and thermal coupled).
Coupled applications: principles
Steady State AC Magnetic coupled with Transient Thermal application: principles
SM coupled with TT: what Flux models
2D example: Induction heating tutorial

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.

2D example: Induction heating tutorial

Foreword

This paragraph is a summary of cases treated in detail in the 2D example: "Induction heating tutorial".

Study carried out

The study proposed in the “2D Induction heating tutorial” is the study of the induction heating of a steel billet.

Studied device

The studied device, shown in the figure below, contains the following components:

an inductor that generates the source field: the inductor is a coil containing 6 copper tubes, supplied by a sinusoidal voltage source
a charge corresponding to the heated component: a cylindrical steel billet
a magnetic core for magnetic flux shunting (flux concentrator)

Treated cases

The simulations depicted in the tutorial are presented as four case studies:

case 1: study about the influence of the frequency and voltage supply values on the electric parameters of the device
case 2: study of the induction heating of the billet with simplifying hypotheses
case 3: study of billet induction heating without simplifying hypotheses
case 4: study of the billet cooling after induction heating

Case 1

The first case is a steady state AC magnetic application for the study of the electric characteristics of the device:

It is about a parametric analysis of the power and current with respect to the inductor terminals for different values of the frequency and voltage supply.

Case 2

The second case is a steady state AC magnetic coupled with transient thermal application for the study of the induction heating process of the billet:

It is about a study carried out with the following simplifying hypotheses:

non linear approximation for the B(H) characteristic of the magnetic materials;
material properties independent on temperature

Case 3

The third case is a steady state AC magnetic coupled with transient thermal application for the study of the induction heating process of the billet:

It is about a study carried out without the previous simplifying hypotheses, i.e.:

nonlinear B(H) characteristic for the magnetic materials;
material properties dependent on temperature

Case 4

The fourth case is a thermal transient application studying the cooling process of the billet after the induction heating process corresponding to Case 3