A methodological approach to support the design of induction hobs

Nowadays in many industrial applications, i.e. electrical household appliances, it is necessary to have a robust and safe control for some variables involved in the analysis of the performances of different products. In addition, the recent ecodesign directives require products increasingly eco-friendly and eco-efficient, preserving high-performance but a low power consumption. For these reasons, the physical prototypes of products require many expensive and complex tests in term of time, resources and qualified personnel involved. To overcome these limitations, the proposed approach is focused on the use of virtual prototyping tools, which support and reduce the expensive physical experiments. The main objective of this paper is the development, implementation and testing of an innovative methodology, which could be an improvement for the sustainable design of induction hobs. Induction heating applied to the domestic cooking has significantly evolved since the first cooking hobs appeared. Different issues such as maximum power available for heating a pot, dimensional compactness of the hobs, or inverter electronics efficiency have achieved a great development. The proposed methodology provides the development of a multi-physic model which is able to estimate the efficiency of the induction hobs starting from the design data of the project. In particular, the multi-physic model is composed by an electromagnetic simulation and a thermal simulation. The electromagnetic simulation, starting from electrical values such as voltage, current and frequency, is able to simulate the eddy current induced in the bottom of the pot, and resistance leads to the Joulean heating of the material. The thermal simulation is able to measure the energy consumption during the operational phase and the temperature reached by the materials. Therefore, the thermal power obtained by the Joulean heating is, at the same time, the output of the electromagnetic simulation and the input of the thermal one. The proposed model can be applied to design product and simulate the performance considering different operating conditions such as different types of cookers, different coils and different materials. Through the use of virtual prototyping tools is possible to control the heat flux on the whole system (stove, pot, water), and to evaluate the energy efficiency during the operational phase. The proposed tool makes the productengineer more aware about decision-making strategies in order to achieve an energy saving, calculated over the whole life cycle.