Skip to content
Close
Talk to an expert
Japanese
Talk to an expert
Japanese

Thinshell coil approximation

Accelerating partially insulated coil analysis via thinshell approximation

 

Magnetism A   •   Current flow   •  Heat solid

The challenge

Simulating Partially Insulated (PI) or No-Insulation (NI) coils is computationally expensive. The insulation layers are microscopic compared to the magnet bulk.

Modeling these layers as full 3D volumes requires an extremely fine mesh, leading to massive element counts and slow solve times. However, ignoring them fails to capture the critical "turn-to-turn" current sharing during ramp-up.

Approach with Quanscient Allsolve

The demo utilized Quanscient Allsolve’s Thinshell formulation, which treats the insulation layer as a 2D boundary condition rather than a 3D geometric volume.

This approach allowed the team to perform a parametric sweep over conductivity values to simulate magnetic field ramp-up dynamics without the computational penalty of volume meshing.

Key results

  • Computational efficiency: The Thinshell method significantly reduced model complexity and runtime compared to traditional volume-based meshing approaches.
  • Design insight: Accurately predicted how conductivity impacts Ramp-Up Time and AC Losses, critical factors for stellarator stability.
  • Current dynamics: Visualized the transition of current redistribution within the coil structure under varying insulation conditions.
An example of the Thin-Shell method exploited in modeling an HTS-tape. The mesh and the norm of the magnetic flux density are shown in two cases: on the left the model with all the layers included, and on the right the model using the Thin-Shell method.