Direct synthesis of equivalent circuits from reduced FE models using proper orthogonal decomposition

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a fast synthesis method of the equivalent circuits of electromagnetic devices using model order reduction. Finite element method (FEM) has been widely used to design electromagnetic devices. For FE analysis of these devices connected to control and deriving circuits, FE equations coupled with the circuit equations have to be solved for many times in their design processes. If the FE models are replaced by equivalent circuit models, computational time could be drastically reduced. Design/methodology/approach In the proposed method, a reduced FE model is obtained using proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) in which the size of FE equation is effectively reduced so that the computational time for FE analysis is shortened. Then, the equivalent circuits are directly synthesized from the admittance function of the reduced system. Findings Accuracy and computational efficiency of the proposed method are compared with those of another POD-based method in which the equivalent circuits are synthesized from fitting of frequency characteristics using optimization algorithm. There are no significant differences in the accuracy of both methods, while the speedup ratio of the former method is found larger than that for the latter method for the same sampling points. Originality/value The equivalent circuits of electric machines and devices have been synthesized on the basis of physical insight of engineers. This paper proposes a novel method by which the equivalent circuits are automatically synthesized from FE model of the electric machines and devices using POD.