Rotation movement based on the spatial fourier interpolation method (SFIM)

In the field of computational electromagnetics, taking into account the rotation of a sub-domain is required to simulate certain devices such as electrical machines. We propose a sliding surface method based on a spatial Fourier interpolation in order to take into account any rotation angle with a very simple numerical implementation.

I. Introduction

Modeling electrical machine with the Finite Element Method (FEM) is now very common since it allows to obtain accurate results on complex geometries. To take into account the motion of the rotor without having to remesh at each position, several methods have been proposed in the literature. One of the most used one is the Locked-Step Method (LSM) which is implemented simply by permuting unknowns along the interface of a regular mesh. However, this approach is restricted to constant speed rotation cases and requires to remesh the interface for each different angular velocity. The Overlapping Finite Element Method (OFEM) [1] and the Mortar Element Method (MEM) [2] [3] enable to take into account any rotation angle of the rotor with respect to the stator. However, these approaches require complex geometrical integration or matrix inversions associated with the interface of the stator and the rotor. In this communication, the SFIM which doesn't require any complex numerical calculations and based on a Fourier interpolation is proposed.