This format was designed as a proof of concept—videos are consistently preferred to written tutorials for all sorts of learning. Look no further than our reliance on lectures, even with learning largely remote, to understand the strength of this preference. It followed, then, that a web page would be the ideal place to put these videos. I used the open source OBS software for recording my tutorial videos and learned Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing. The web page is designed to be responsive—viewable from both mobile and desktop browsers.
This page serves as a project report and tutorial repository, and will be modified to keep only the information relevant to future EE 511 students if it is decided that COMSOL Multiphysics is a good alternative to FEMM, and the school purchases the software’s AC/DC Module.Though Cal Poly has access to the base software in its Virtual Computer Lab, adding the AC/DC Module would allow for students to access the extended scope of the software. They would be able to use it as a FEMM alternative in magnetics modeling, and also leverage all the powerful abilities it has for general electromagnetics and motor modeling
This project was completed for Professor Poshtan’s EE 511 course, to give future student’s in the class the ability to use the COMSOL Multiphysics software instead of the FEMM software for magnetics modeling. FEMM is useful only in limited situations, with an unwieldy visual editor, poor dynamic capabilities, and simulation capabilities largely limited to the magnetic domain.
COMSOL, on the other hand, has a very user-friendly and accessible editor design, simulation capabilities ranging across a huge variety of physical phenomena, as well as the ability to take studies of these physics outputs in the stationary state, in a time dependent scenario, and more. This page will focus on magnetics and motor modeling, so that Cal Poly students can use COMSOL as a viable FEMM alternative for future EE 511 classes and magnetics modeling projects.
I identified a few potential alternatives for the project, before going for COMSOL. All of these use the Finite Element Method to perform the magnetics modeling, and are available in some capacity through Cal Poly.
Ansys had similar capabilities to COMSOL, but I ultimately determined that I preferred the more academic format and feel of COMSOL. In addition, COMSOL’s small team and good customer service were a strong point in its favor.
Agros2D was considered, but ultimately considered too close to FEMM in terms of its limitations and capabilities. Though the visual editor was a step up from FEMM, the abilities of the other programs listed here were more interesting to me.
EMWorks has the benefit of being a Solidworks addon, and thus benefiting from the many powerful capabilities and general user-friendliness of Solidworks. Ultimately, it proved too difficult to get a license, compared to COMSOL.
The examples chosen ended up being based on my own experience learning the software, and though I considered a variety of examples for tutorial content—including a Frequency Domain Study of Three-Phase Motor and an Inductance Motor, but ended up going with the following three examples.
The first example I used was based on a video I found early in the process, which went over the creation of a similar solenoid. This original video, available here, was really helpful to me, showing me the basics of the software by giving me a simple design to build from scratch and an idea of COMSOL’s workflow. My goal with this video was to teach this example in my own style, with verbal delivery that was absent in its predecessor and a focus on walking through my process via audio and deliberate action. This video contains both the build instructions and outputs of the example.
This second example was split into two videos, one detailing the building of the generator and one detailing the visualization of its outputs. These videos were informed by COMSOL’s written guide on building a 2D Generator, available here. The first video (right) seeks to give future Cal Poly students a more visual guide to the creation of a 2D COMSOL model, allowing them to better familiarize themselves with the control scheme and layout of COMSOL for future projects. The outputs, and methods of tweaking and optimizing it, are the subjects of the second video (right).
My final example details the build for a 3D Permanent Magnet Motor. This final example was chosen as a potential model a future student could build if they wanted to really dig into some of COMSOL’s more complex capabilities.The video draws from COMSOL’s written guide on building a 3D PM Motor. It consists only of the build for the example, as the outputs can’t be calculated on my machine. Luckily, Cal Poly offers students the COMSOL base software through their Virtual Computer lab, and the machines used should be able to get the outputs for examples like this, and more. The outputs for this example can be found in the written guide mentioned before, available here.
These tutorials were designed to help future students learn the nuances of the COMSOL Multiphysics software, and its utility in solving a variety of magnetics problems. The effectiveness of this project for future EE 511 classes depends on Cal Poly’s willingness to get a license for the AC/DC module, as that was required for all of these examples, along with many more, documented on COMSOL’s site, that are relevant to Electric Machines.
I hope you enjoyed this project, Professor Poshtan! I know the format is somewhat irregular. Let me know if you think Cal Poly will be getting the AC/DC module license—if so, I can come back to this page and make the written components more student-facing. Also, it might be cool to work with you on updating the imagery (and even content, to some degree) to make it more related to the class, as well.