Introduction
An electric analysis supports Steady-State Electric Conduction. Primarily, this analysis type is used to determine the electric potential in a conducting body created by the external application of voltage or current loads. From the solution, other results items are computed such as conduction currents, electric field, and joule heating.
An Electric Analysis supports single and multibody parts. Contact conditions are automatically established between parts. In addition, an analysis can be scoped as a single step or in multiple steps.
An Electric analysis computes Joule Heating from the electric resistance and current in the conductor. This joule heating may be passed as a load to a Thermal analysis simulation using an Imported Load if the Electric analysis Solution data is to be transferred to Thermal analysis. Similarly, an electric analysis can accept a Thermal Condition from a thermal analysis to specify temperatures in the body for material property evaluation of temperature-dependent materials.
Points to Remember
A steady-state electric analysis may be either linear (constant material properties) or nonlinear (temperature dependent material properties). Additional details for scoping nonlinearities are described in the Nonlinear Controls section.
Once an Electric Analysis is created, Voltage and Current loads can be applied to any conducting body. For material properties that are temperature dependent, a temperature distribution can be imported using the Thermal Condition option.
In addition, equipotential surfaces can be created using the Coupling Condition load option.
Preparing the Analysis
Create Analysis System
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From the Toolbox, drag the Electric template to the Project Schematic.
Define Engineering Data
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When using an Ansys license that includes the Emag license feature, only the following material properties are allowed: Isotropic Resistivity, Orthotropic Resistivity, Relative Permeability, Relative Permeability (Orthotropic), Coercive Force & Residual Induction, B-H Curve, B-H Curve (Orthotropic), Demagnetization B-H Curve. You may have to turn the filter off in the Engineering Data tab to suppress or delete those material properties/models that are not supported for the license.
Attach Geometry
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Note that 3D shell bodies and line bodies are not supported in an electric analysis.
Define Part Behavior
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Mechanical does not support Rigid Bodies in electric analyses. For more information, see the Stiffness Behavior documentation for Rigid Bodies.
Define Connections
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In an electric analysis, only bonded, face-face contact is valid. Any joints or springs are ignored. For perfect conduction across parts, use the MPC formulation. To model contact resistance, use Augmented Lagrange or Pure Penalty with a defined Electric Conductance.
Apply Mesh Controls/Preview Mesh
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Only higher order elements are allowed for an electric analysis.
Establish Analysis Settings
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For an electric analysis, the basic Analysis Settings include:
- Step Controls
These properties are used to specify the end time of a step in a single or multiple step analysis.
Multiple steps are needed if you want to change load values, the solution settings, or the solution output frequency over specific steps. Typically you do not need to change the default values.
- Output Controls
These properties allow you to specify the time points at which results should be available for postprocessing. A multi-step analysis involves calculating solutions at several time points in the load history. However you may not be interested in all of the possible results items and writing all the results can make the result file size unwieldy. You can restrict the amount of output by requesting results only at certain time points or limit the results that go onto the results file at each time point.
- Analysis Data Management
Common Analysis Data Management properties are available for this analysis type.
Define Initial Conditions
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There is no initial condition specification for an Electric analysis.
Apply Boundary Conditions
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The following loads are supported in a Steady-State Electric analysis:
Solve
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The Solution Information object provides some tools to monitor solution progress.
Solution Output continuously updates any listing output from the solver and provides valuable information on the behavior of the model during the analysis. Any convergence data output in this printout can be graphically displayed as explained in the Solution Information section.
Review Results
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Applicable results are all electric result types.
Once a solution is available, you can contour the results or animate the results to review the responses of the model.
For the results of a multi-step analysis that has a solution at several time points, you can use probes to display variations of a result item over the steps.
You may also wish to use the Charts feature to plot multiple result quantities against time (steps). For example, you could compare current and joule heating. Charts can also be useful when comparing the results between two analysis branches of the same model.