SIMULATION OF INDUCTIVE HEATING

Induction heating can be described by a heat transfer equation, where the heat is generated through ohmic losses from eddy currents induced by varying electromagnetic fields. In general this phenomenon will have to be described by two coupled equations, because most of the material properties are temperature-dependent ([3,4,14]). Velocity effects have been included in the heat transfer equation, using special upwind techniques to deal with the singularly perturbed character of the equation. External radiation and convection effects can be imposed as boundary conditions. Current conservation in eddy current regions can also be enforced. Effects around Curie temperature transitions can be studied. In axisymmetry a special transformed formulation was used for the eddy current equation to avoid inaccuracies around the Z-axis. A description will be given of an integrated simulation environment for the solution of coupled eddy current and heat dissipation problems. The software has been constructed using the high level language PDL and the package generator Mammy ([8,9]).