MultiNet example - Thermal 2D/Electromagnetic 3D

The strength of MultiNet is that the user may link a 2D solver in ThermNet to a 3D solver in MagNet, providing the possibility of simulating certain applications that would otherwise require a full 2-way 3D electromagnetic and 3D thermal coupled solution. Applications that require the mixture of different dimensions include those where each simulation may be 2-dimentional on its own, but no longer 2-dimensional when both aspects of physics are considered. Other applications include those that are 2D in thermal, but 3D in electromagnetics.

An example of this type of application is a long structure that is heated with a long spiral coil (see Figure 1). The electromagnetic simulation in 3D would require that the geometry be modeled as shown in Figure 1 and the current injected in the coil as shown in the cut-away view in Figure 2. The thermal simulation would require a 2D analysis of the cross-section as shown in Figure 3.

An interesting example is shown in Figure 4, where the workpiece is not centered with respect to the coil. In this case, too, the electromagnetic simulation is 3D and the thermal solution is the cross-section shown in Figure 5.