The purpose of this paper is to clarify the usefulness of characteristics analysis of an interior permanent magnet (IPM) motor using the 3‐D finite element method (FEM) with prismatic elements from the view point of the accuracy and the calculation time.
The authors analyzed characteristics of an IPM motor applied by the pulse width modulation (PWM) voltage source using the 3‐D FEM with prismatic elements and with tetrahedral elements; then compared the calculated results and the calculation time using prismatic elements with those using tetrahedral elements.
It was found that the calculated current and torque, and eddy current loss using prismatic elements are almost the same as those using tetrahedral elements. The calculation time using prismatic elements is shorter than that using tetrahedral elements.
This paper verifies the usefulness of the 3‐D FEM with prismatic elements through characteristics analysis of an IPM motor driven by the PWM voltage source.
