Quadtree Meshes Applied to the Finite Element Computation of Phase Inductances in An Induction Machine

In this paper, the quadtree data structure and recent advances on the construction of polygonal finite element Interpolants are applied to the study of an induction machine. Quadtree is a hierarchical data structure that is computationally very attractive for adaptive numerical simulations. Mesh generation, adptive refinement and direct data feeding from CAD drawings in pixel format are straightforward for quadtree meshes. Efficient multigrid methods can be used because of the regularity of the resulting grid. However, finite elements are non-conforming on quadtree meshes due to level-mismatches between adjacent elements, which produce the so called “hanging nodes”. Meshfree (Laplace) basis functions have been used to over-come this problem, and a quadtree mesh has been applied to the evaluation of the winding inductances of an induction motor.