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Hi all,
It has been a while since I have done any FEM simulation wrt magnetics, so I would appreciate some clarification wrt the application note SNOAA04A and how to translate this to my own coil design (as I'm having issues getting the Excel macros to run a FEMM, but also I'm just curious on the specifics to be honest). The design I'm trying to simulate can be found as an attachment, being Excel_FEMM_v1p29.xlsm.
This details a circular coil for the LDC1614 with a diameter of 26.88mm, 2 layers (one on top layer of PCB and one on bottom layer of PCB, e.g. 1.6mm PCB) and 22 turns on each layer. Trace width and all other details can be found in the Excel file.
What I cannot remember is how to convert the coil design into a FEM model. I know that I have to use an asymmetric simulation, as I can exploit the symmetry in the circular coil. It's also fairly simple to draw one single trace, create the trace spacing and draw another one. But when you have to create circuit, there is a number of turn requested and I'm not sure how to interpret this.
E.g., do I have to create two traces of one layer and assign 22 turn to that circuit? Like this figure below. With an asymmetric problem, I have to define the boundary conditions such that the center of the boundary conditions is the correct distance away from the innermost turn of the coil.
Or do I create 22 traces with corresponding traces and assign 1 turn to it? It's probably very trivial, but if someone could provide me with an answer that would be great.
Many thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
Jim
Jim,
It has been a while for me as well in building a from-scratch FEMM circuit.
As a short-term workaround, I used your spreadsheet to create a sim file and ran the sim to create an output file.
Both are attached.
Regards,
John
From_2821_Excel_FEMM_v1p29_xlsm..ansFrom_2821_Excel_FEMM_v1p29_xlsm..fem
Hi John,
Thanks, I can at least check these results now, but I still need to be able to test several coil designs. I will make a post on the forum of FEMM to see if they can answer my questions if I need to start constructing coils by hand.
Kind regards,
Jim
Thanks for the update Jim.
I believe there is guidance in the FEMM user's manual on their web site.
If you can't find what you are looking for please let me know and we will figure out how to get you what you need.
John
Could you perhaps enclose the Excel file with updated results from FEMM that you acquired when running the macros? I'm almost finished with setting up the Matlab equivalent, which is able to create the same geometry as the .fem you attached. However, I cannot see how the simulation results of the initial run are used to setup the second simulation run.
Kind regards,
Jim
Jim,
The spreadsheet, resulting FEMM sim file and .ans file are in the attached .zip.
The starting point for these files was the downloaded spreadsheet tool without any changes.
There is also a snap of the pop-up I got when I clicked the FEMM Problem menu item.
I hope this helps.
Regards,
John
24FEB2022.zip
John,
Thanks! This helps me finishing my Matlab script for running the FEMM simulation.
I am still curious as to why the excel file is not able to work for me. One final thing that I think could be the culprit is the version of Excel I'm using. My company laptop has Office 365 and thus the latest version of Excel. Which one are you using?
Kind regards,
Jim
John,
You can close this thread as well. I have a working Matlab interface now, so I can continue with my work. Thanks for the assistance!
Kind regards,
Jim
You are welcome Jim.
Please let me know if you have any more questions.
John
Could you perhaps run this Excel file? I'm not able to recreate the planar setup from the macros and I don't know where I'm going wrong.
Could you provide me with the .fem and .ans files? Many thanks!
Jim,
I was able to get the files you asked for, but it took a couple of steps.
The first step was to start a Run FEMM sim from the spreadsheet.
At first it complained:
but after clicking "OK" it started FEMM as usual but the desktop looked weird:
The sim completed and it displayed the following answer:
After saving, closing, restarting FEMM and opening the sim file (attached), it showed the following workspace with an Asymmetric Problem Type, but threw an error if tried a sim:
Changing the Problem Type to Planar allowed the sim to run:
giving the following result (attached) which looks to me to be the same as the first result from the spreadsheet-based run:
It is kind of a workaround, but it seems to give a stable answer.
Regards,
John