ElectroMag Nodes - Basic Electromagnetics solver in Blender  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: Schottky
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2023, 12:52:15 pm
content: Hi, I would like to share my project "ElectroMag Nodes", it is a first attempt at making a basic electromagnetic solver in Blender using geometry nodes.With Electromag Nodes allows to take advantage of Blender's fast and procedural workflow to create complex shapes and geometries. You will be able design inductors, coils and magnetics and visualise their magnetic fields and calculate their inductance. You will also be able study electrostatics, visualise electrics fields of objects, calculate potentials, surface charge density and capacitance. These set of nodes will be useful especially for students to better understand electromagnetics, which can be a difficult topic to study and learn. It will also be useful for electrical engineers who design circuit boards, and components.This initial version of ElectroMag Nodes only supports electrostatics and magnetostatics, it is by no means yet a replacement to existing professional tool. The magnetostatics solvers solve Biot-Savart law for line currents, and the electrostatics solvers calculate the electric field and voltage assuming surface charge distribution only.Here are some demo videos showing what I have created so farDownload ElectroMag Nodes from:Blender Markethttps://blendermarket.com/products/electromag-nodesGumroad:https://highvoltage.gumroad.com/l/electromagnodesI have also created guide videos on how to use ElectroMag Nodeshttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVLUdBCYMCqSC1javGGlQ82pwvylFBGnE

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2023, 01:51:57 pm
content: It looks spectacular, but are the results valid?For example If I look at the two toroidal inductors in the induction heater, I find it hard to imagine the magnetic field in the toroids stop in the part there is no wire around it.As it is a "first attempt", I imagine there are just no calculations about the magnetic permeability of the core materials (yet?) in the simulations?I have also seen some similar (though less spectacular) animations of a field solver used in FreeCAD.

author: Schottky
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 11, 2023, 02:30:26 pm
content: So I have done comparisons with FastHenry and FEMM for inductances, which would indicate that the magnetic fields are correct. You can see my comparison in this guide videohttps://youtu.be/aZRNXmWNqj8?t=322someone on Twitter also commented on the fact that the magnetic field in the toroids seem to be non-existent in area where there are no windings. This is mainly due to the visualisation settings I had at the time, I just happened to make the fields that are week more transparent such that they become invisible. There is definitely a magnetic field in the area where there are no turns, here is another illustration of the toroidhttps://pbs.twimg.com/media/F2DNsf1b0AEO23j?format=png

author: Schottky
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 12, 2023, 11:43:28 pm
content: Meissner Effect - Type 1 Superconductor Animation created with ElectroMag nodes

author: Schottky
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2023, 10:52:09 pm
content: I’ve created a Laplace solver in Blender's geometry nodes to determine the current distribution and voltage drop in PCB copper planes!You can specify either Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions i.e. fixed voltage or fixed current. This will be useful in determining how much of an applied voltage reaches the load, and how much voltage needs to be generated to compensate.A good design example to test this solver is this 2kW multi-phase bidirectional DC/DC converter from TI which can supply up to 166A of load current at 12V across four phases. Because of these high currents, the voltage directly at the inputs and outputs of each phase will be different than the terminal voltages. You can see in this video that the applied 36V at the input terminal drops by up to 0.15V when it reaches the furthest DC/DC converter phase, and for the 12V output the furthest DC/DC converter will have to generate 12.33V to compensate for the voltage drop across the PCB plane. Although these voltage variations might not be too high, it is the power loss that is high and is up to 27W in total. That is why copper bus bars are then used to minimise these resistive losses

author: Upballoon
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: September 07, 2023, 11:41:12 pm
content: How long does it take to setup something like this? Is it worth using this as a design tool to check possible EMC problems or does it take too long that the "good enough" approach would be preferred?

author: Schottky
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 08, 2023, 01:31:22 pm
content: Quote from: Upballoon on September 07, 2023, 11:41:12 pmyou certainly need to be familiar with Blender to setup the geometry and the mesh, and that what takes a long time to do. Whereas most existing tools on the market take care of that for you.ElectroMag Nodes at this stage is not meant to be a replacement for existing tools, for now I would say it is only good to create educational content and perhaps doing initial simulations before then going to a professional tool

author: MegaVolt
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 04, 2023, 02:13:58 pm
content: It looks amazing. Is there any step-by-step tutorial for creating something simple?