Home
Flux
Flux is a finite element software for low-frequency electromagnetic and thermal simulations. Both, 2D and 3D solutions are available...
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...
Mesh: principles
Automatic mesh parameters (options)
Meshing of volumes algorithms

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.

Meshing of volumes algorithms

Introduction

Flux provides two generators for automatic meshing of volumes: the ASML mesher and the Delaunay mesher.

The two meshers are presented in the blocks below.

ASML mesher

The ASML Mesher (Altair Solid Meshing Library) is a volume mesher which is the proprietary of Altair. This is a mesher of volume mesh starting from a surface mesh. Including ASML allows to generate tetrahedral mesh of volume from a mesh of surface triangular.

Delaunay mesher

The mesh generation by the Delaunay mesher is carried out in two phases, as presented in the table and figure below.

Note: The Delaunay mesher is not available if the Dynamic memory is activated (Delaunay is available only with User memory).


Stage	Description
1	Generation of boundary mesh
2	Insertion of internal nodes into border mesh elements

Comparison

Comparison of Volume mesh generators is presented in the table below


	Delaunay	ASML (Altair Solid Mesher Library)
Characteristics	This mesher is the historical mesher of Flux Potentially it rebuild the surface mesh to construct a mesh of volume	Respects the surface mesh (not node insertion) Robust mesher=> tested by other simulation tools
Advantages / disadvantages	Relaxation may be important =>Less nodes and less mesh elements More time to mesh the device Difficulty with the extrusive mesh	Low relaxation => Increase the number of nodes and the number of mesh elements Low time to mesh the device with good quality of the mesh compared to Delaunay Suitable for mixed mesh

Remember: In 3D, in case of a mixed meshing (mapped mesh /automatic mesh) with the Delaunay mesher, certain nodes must be inserted on the faces during the generation of the mesh front. This insertion is forbidden on the mapped faces, which generates the failure of the Delaunay mesher. The ASML mesher is better suited to this problem.

Configure the mesher

To configure the volume mesher:

clic on: Tools > Geometry and Mesh options > Edit
clic on tab Mesh
choose the mesher