Simcenter MAGNET Suite Thermal analysis of stranded coil components in 3D

Simcenter MAGNET Thermal provides four component parameters, including CompositeMaterialDirection, that can be used to effectively specify anisotropic thermal properties for stranded coils. However, a problem occurs in 3D when the strand direction inside a given coil component is not unique, for example inside a coil end-turn. There is a simple scripting solution to get around this limitation.

The following steps should be taken:

1. In Simcenter MAGNET, solve the model as Static 3D with current in every stranded coil.
2. For each conducting component in a stranded coil (in this example, "Component#1"), execute these scripting commands from MAGNET. This sets the component's J vector field as the override field for the component's CompositeMaterialDirection property. This works because J is always aligned with the strand direction, and it is OK if the composite material direction is not specified as a unit vector.
   
   set Mesh = getDocument().getSolution().getMesh(1, "Component#1")
   set Field = getDocument().getSolution().getSystemField(Mesh, "J")
   call getDocument().setSolverPropertyField(Field, infoSolverPropertyFieldIdCompositeMaterialDirection)
    
3. Save the model and switch to MAGNET Thermal.
4. Make sure that the coil components' CompositeMaterialDirection parameters are not set. If CompositeMaterialDirection is set for any coil component, the parameter value will have precedence over the component's solver property field. We are not aware of any other solver property field that will get overridden in this way.
5. Solve the thermal problem. If coupling the simulation with MAGNET Static 3D, do not Reuse the existing EM solution, or you will get error code 152017: The electromagnetic solution does not match the current state of the electromagnetic model. This is because the script in step 2 was executed after the simulation in step 1, and the solver thinks the model is now out of sync with its solution.