Cobham Technical Services Opera-3D finite element software

Cobham Technical Services has extended the multiphysics capabilities of the Opera-3D finite element software for electromagnetic design with a solver that can be used to analyse natural vibration modes. Electrical machine developers can employ the tool to investigate and minimise forces that might cause oscillations close to the natural frequencies of the equipment and thereby avoid excessive vibration or collisions between rotating and stationary parts.

By capturing such mechanical vibration in conjunction with electromagnetic modelling, and thermal performance if required, the integrated 3D tool suite can greatly reduce the complexity and timescales of design projects.

One of the key benefits of this capability is a further reduction in the need to create physical prototypes to explore the behaviour of a proposed design concept. With the greater understanding of new designs that more thorough simulation brings, it can be possible to reduce the real-world prototyping phase to a few iterations. This can take months out of design cycles - along with the associated high costs.

The latest version of the software extends the fundamental performance advantage of Opera for many common design engineering applications.

The modal solver - STRESS/EV - finds a user-specified number of eigenvalues within a specified frequency range and calculates the eigenvectors of each mode. It works in conjunction with the static stress analysis capability of Opera that calculates the deformation, stresses and strains of a body which is subject to external and internal forces. The forces calculated from electromagnetic fields can be used as input to the stress analysis.