Mixed-Order Finite-Element Modeling of Magnetic Material Degradation Due to Cutting

As a part of manufacturing of electrical machines, electrical sheets are cut to the desired shape by various cutting techniques, such as punching and laser cutting. This cutting process degrades the magnetic material near the cut edge, which should be included in the finite-element modeling of electrical machines. However, due to the nature of the cutting effects, the existing finite-element modeling of the cutting effect results in computationally heavy simulations. This paper investigates the application of mixed-order elements to model the cutting effect. The second-order nodal triangular elements are used near the cut edge, whereas transition/first-order elements are applied in the remaining solution domain. Furthermore, the accuracy of the presented method is analyzed with the traditional method. According to the simulations, the mixed-order elements returned accurate results significantly faster than the traditional finite-element-based approaches. Furthermore, the effect of the cutting on the machine performance is also studied by comparing its results briefly.