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SuperPowers for Electrical Engineers 🦸🏻♂️
👋 Hello Supergineers! Dr. Molina here! 👨🔧
Welcome to Dr.Molina Newsletter, where I break down Magnetic designs for you every week, in 4 minutes.
If you are not already subscribed, this is the perfect timing. Good things are coming…
After a couple of weeks of rest, we are back for the second season of your Magnetic Newsletter, the switch is ON!!
Thank you, thank you, hold your horses, I haven´t explained the content for the new season yet!
During my break, I have done a lot of things with my pregnant wife🤰and my dog, Pablo. I have spent a few days on the unspoiled beaches of Cabo de Gata, Almería. I have enjoyed the beaches and finally, we have chosen a name for our coming daughter 😍.
Also, I visited my family and friends in my hometown to take positive energy to start the new year. My hometown is in the South of La Mancha, the land of Don Quijote. I was the first son of my mother, who was the first over five daughters of my grandfather who was the Butcher of the town and the first investor at Frenetic!
With all the dramatic news we receive every day, my hometown is a little paradise where everyone is finding the comic side of the situation and bringing positive energy to the table.
First of all, thank you for reading, I’m glad you are here again. If this is your first time, welcome to our small community of power electronic and magnetic enthusiastic people.
During the last weeks, I have been thinking about which content will be interesting to include in this second season of the Newsletter and these are my ideas, which probably I will evolve during the coming months and also I expect to read your comments:
More Community. During the first season, I missed a little bit of discussion with the community.
Frenetic stories
Magnetic Techniques and good designs
In this edition, I will talk about my experience building the first models at Frenetic.
Frenetic Stories
To be honest, my initial plan to create Frenetic was missing a very important point. How are we going to choose which models to use for the magnetic design? Who will do that job? It was a big mess at the beginning because there are hundreds of publications for specific calculations such as the reluctances models or the gap calculations. You will be asking yourself, wait, weren´t these guys using Artificial Intelligence?
Yes, but let me explain you again. We use AI for two main purposes.
Creating models for parameters that we can measure, such as the leakage inductance and the current FEM process takes minutes or hours. With AI we are able to increase the accuracy (85% of average) and accelerate the time (less than 5 seconds to make the calculation.
To accelerate algorithms. There are some calculations that are very slow due to the algorithm including a lot of steps and database search, with AI, we can accelerate that.
Continuing with the question of where are the models coming from.
We divided the engineers into three teams: the Hardware team, the AI team, and the Software team.
In the beginning, the software team applied the classic models of Dowell, Steinmetz, and basic design fluxes.
The hardware guys were building, measuring, and testing magnetics using the basic software.
The feedback from the hardware team was used by the software guys to tune the models.
The AI team in parallel is building a database of designs with the following concept.
1️⃣ There are some inputs, which are basically the operating conditions of the magnetic.
2️⃣ Second, we have a physical description of the component.
3️⃣ Finally, we have the outputs, which represent how the component behaves under these specific inputs.
Using this structure, we are building databases of magnetics and results.
The big error
In 2018, when we started, we thought that using these data, we were able to create a magic Artificial Intelligence able to propose a magnetic component for these specific inputs. And you know what?
We failed (dot)
And we learned…
There wasn´t possible to create a good universal model due to the amount of data needed for all the variables (I don´t remember exactly, but at that moment we were trying to create 36 outputs, that combined make sense with less than 1000 data points). The system was evolving well, I mean: The system chooses a valid core for the design but listen, we wanted to design World class magnetics and this system had kindergarten level.
Then, we decided to split the calculations into small blocks, like:
Core losses for ferrite
Core losses for powder material
Leakage inductance in concentric
AC winding losses
…
Since we had some tuned models from the state of the art which were tested in the lab, we used those models where we can have accurate measurements in the Lab, we apply AI.
However, I asked myself. How can I improve our models? (apart from investing more in engineers)
Collaborating with the best researchers of magnetics in the world
In 2020 we started our collaboration with magnetic design experts and we haven´t stopped. Our collaborations with these experts are giving us:
Improved models for calculations
Feedback from the current design algorithm
And you will be asking, who are your collaborators? Let me name a few of them.
Javier Uceda - One of the fathers of Power Electronics in Spain and current director of CEI-UPM.
Bryce Hesterman - Principal Research Engineer at the Utah State University
Jorge García - Professor at Universidad de Oviedo
Sarah Saeed Hazkial - Postdoc at Universidad de Oviedo
Dennis Feucht - Innovatia
And we are very happy to have a new and exciting new collaborator, but you will need to wait until the next week…😜.
We basically work with them and our engineers to try to understand which models are working better and conduct investigations for potential improvements.
For example, we have spent more than 1 year investigating about predict Rac based on measurements with Jorge García and Sarah Saeed, with impressive results.
More than ever, we need to accelerate electrification and we are always there:
Frenetic, better magnetics
If you are still here, congratulations, you are doing very well, and second, I invite you to answer this email telling me your interest in Magnetics.
Additionally, we are building a great community with our training, check the link below: