Integrating FE into induction motor design-a marriage of inconvenience?

The finite element method has long offered the tantalising promise of providing a design tool that gives detailed information about the electromagnetic conditions within the heart of a motor. The main problem with this method, however, is that it is both nonintuitive and complex, so that although much work on finite element modelling has been carried out in universities, little has found its way into the industrial design office. However careful attention to the designer interface and the type of FE models used circumvents the difficulties. Linking the design FE software to an engineering database creates a flexible and powerful environment for routine design. This basic design framework can also evolve easily to match future improvements in computational power. Formal optimisation procedures for global design will also become more widely available as an additional design facility