Time-Harmonic 3D solver

The Time-Harmonic 3D solver finds the time-harmonic magnetic field in and around current-carrying conductors, in the presence of isotropic materials that may be conducting, magnetic, or both. The solver is useful to reduce the design time and cost for devices such as induction heaters, power transformers, and any device with significant eddy currents. It is theoretically only possible when all the materials in the problem are operating in the linear region of the B-H curve. If they are nonlinear, sinusoidally-varying sources will not give rise to sinusoidally-varying fields, and time-harmonic analysis is not possible. However, there are special cases, such as induction machine analysis, which can be solved with add-on RIM Design Assistant - ask your representative about these.

The solver can handle two types of conductors, solid and stranded. The former is simply a solid piece of conductor, in which the current is free to flow where it wants. In a solid copper wire carrying 60 Hz current, for example, the skin effect dictates that most of the current will flow near the surface of the wire. A stranded conductor is made up of many fine wires. These wires are assumed to be uniformly distributed over the cross-section, insulated from one another, and in series.

This solver is a time-harmonic version of the Transient 3D solver, solving devices with eddy currents and taking skin effects into account. In Time-Harmonic, the sources and fields are assumed to be time-harmonic at one specified frequency; complex phasors are used to represent them. This assumption is only valid when all the materials in the problem are operating in the linear region, otherwise the Transient solvers should be used. These solvers are applicable for devices with sinusoidal excitation and eddy currents, such as induction heaters, PCB transformers and inductors, eddy-current non-destructive testing, and many other devices.