Methods, Tools, and Software for Physical Process Analysis and Design

Designing of induction heating, or, generally electro technological installations, requires mathematical modeling for solving problems related to various physical phenomena, including electromagnetic (EM), thermal, mechanical, fluidic, and metallurgical fields. This article focuses on the solution of Maxwell's equations (MEs) and provides some basic information regarding the heat transfer and fluid equations, because these physical phenomena usually are strongly coupled to magnetic and electric fields. The solutions are usually obtained by using specific numerical methods such as finite-element method, finite difference method, boundary-element method or volume-integral method, and direct-solution method. The article also discusses the typical structure of commercial codes (preprocessor, solver, and postprocessor) to solve field problems mainly in finite-element method.