Electromagnetic Simulation Software Free

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Free Computational Electromagnetic Modeling Codes

The software in this list is either free or available at a nominal charge and can be downloaded over the internet. Some of the codes require the user to register with the distributor's web site.

If you are familiar with other free EM modeling software that that should be added to this list, please send the name of the software, a hypertext link, and a brief description to CVEL-L@clemson.edu.

See also: Commercial Electromagnetic Modeling Codes

GprMax is open source software that simulates electromagnetic wave propagation. It solves Maxwell’s equations in 3D using the Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method. GprMax was designed for modelling Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) but can also be used to model electromagnetic wave propagation for many other applications. MedFDTD is a 3D parallel electromagnetic simulation software for bioelectromagnetics by FDTD method. MedFDTD can simulate electromagnetic radiation, calculate SAR and temperature rise, estimate antenna radiation power, and all calculations can be performed in parallel. Jan 30, 2013  XFdtd 3D EM Simulation Software provides engineers with powerful tools to shorten development time and release products to market sooner. XF includes full-wave, static, bio-thermal, optimization, and circuit solvers to tackle a wide variety of applications, including antenna design and placement, biomedical and SAR, EMI/EMC, microwave devices, radar and scattering, automotive radar. Electromagnetic simulation in three dimension The Electromagnetic Low Frequency (ELF) Simulator is a tool designed to simulate the result magnetic field of some configuration in 50-60 Hz frequency. The electric configuration can includes power lines, coils, transformers, electric cabinet and electric poles.

(Last update: June 6, 2019 )

Angora

OpenEMS is a free and open electromagnetic field solver using the FDTD method that supports cartesian and cylindrical coordinates. Matlab or Octave are used as an easy and flexible scripting interface. Free Models and More. Yobi3D- Free 3D Models Search Engine. WARNING - Tool does find models behind pay walls. Thingiverse- Free 3D models, primarily intended for 3D printing. Electromagnetic Simulation Software Finite-Difference Time-Domain. Meep- FDTD package from MIT that supports parallel processing.

Electromagnetic Modeling Software

Angora is a free, open-source FDTD software package that computes numerical solutions to electromagnetic radiation and scattering problems. It was developed by Ilker R. Capoglu, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Biophotonics Laboratory in the Biomedical Engineering Department of Northwestern University.

ASAP - Antenna Scatterers Analysis Program

Free magnetic simulation software

A general purpose user-oriented computer program for analysis of thin-wire structures in the presence of finite ground. An alternative to the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC) for analyzing insulated or bare thin wire antenna structures over a lossy or perfect ground plane based on the moment method. Still available on the web at: http://raylcross.net/asap/index.html; however the web page has not been updated recently and the contact information no longer works.

AtaiTec Free 2D Field Solver

A 2D BEM Field Solver to compute RLGC and impedance matrices of 2D transmission lines with trapezoidal cross sections.

ATLC - Arbitrary Transmission Line Calculator

A free, open-source program for computing the properties of transmission lines. It is a 2D simulator based on a finite difference approximation to Laplace's Equation. The program is primarily designed for Unix or Unix-like systems, although it has been compiled on a Windows system. It is highly portable, having been run on both a Cray supercomputer, a Sony Playstation 3 games console, and virtually every type of computer in between these two extremes. The user has to draw the cross section of the transmission line using a program able to save BMP files (e.g. Gimp), then process the BMP files with atlc. The program is written by Dr. David Kirkby (G8WRB).

ATLC2 - Arbitrary Transmission Line Calculator 2

Inspired by 'atlc', but written by a different author, 'atlc2' is a free but closed source Microsoft Windows program for computing the properties of transmission lines. It is a 2D simulator based on Faraday's Law. The user has to draw the cross section of the transmission line using a program able to save BMP files (e.g. Gimp), then process the BMP files with atlc2.

Elmer

Elmer is open source multiphysical simulation software mainly developed by CSC - IT Center for Science in Finland. Elmer includes physical models for problems in fluid dynamics, structural mechanics, electromagnetics, heat transfer and acoustics. These are described by partial differential equations that Elmer solves using the Finite Element Method (FEM).

emAnalyze

This was formerly the Toy and ToyBox codes. emAnalyze is a collection of 3D test and example codes for time-domain local-operator methods. The website is still under development. It is not clear if the codes are still available at no charge.

EMAP

EMAP is a family of three-dimensional electromagnetic modeling codes developed at the University of Missouri-Rolla and Clemson University. Each code has different capabilities, but they all have a common easy to understand input file format. EMAP2 is a scalar FEM code, EMAP3 is a vector FEM code, and EMAP5 is a vector FEM/MoM code.

EMCoS Antenna VLab SV

EMCoS Antenna VLab SV is a computational platform for modeling antennas and their surrounding environment. It has a CAD interface and its simulation core is based on the Method of Moments. The student version includes a fully functional EM solver limited to 2GB memory for in-core or out-of-core calculations.

EM Explorer

EM Explorer (EMXP) is a 3D electromagnetic (EM) solver for plane wave scattering problems of periodic structures. It is largely based on the same method of Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD). Therefore it inherits most of FDTD's advantages and disadvantages. The advantages include simple & robust numerical algorithm, versatility for nearly any geometries, and good scalability of computing resources as a function of simulation volume size. The disadvantages are numerical dispersion and stability constraint due to the finite difference (FD) approximation to Maxwell's equations and explicit time marching algorithm.

emGine Environment

The emGine Environment is a full-wave 3D electromagnetic simulation environment solving Maxwell's equations in time-domain. It is used for the modeling of high-frequency electromagnetic field in microwave circuits, antennas, resonators, hollow waveguides, etc. For non-commercial and non-governmental usage, e.g., for academic, research and educational purposes, the tlmGine electromagnetic engine is provided for free in binary format (i.e., no source code is provided for the electromagnetic engine). The emGine GUI - the graphical user interface - is an open source project and is licensed under the tri-license MPL/GPL/LGPL.

ERMES

ERMES (Electric Regularized Maxwell Equations with Singularities) is a finite element code in the frequency domain implemented in C++. The current version of ERMES is multi-processor (OpenMP) and it runs on Microsoft Windows. ERMES has a user-friendly interface created with Tcl/Tk and integrated in the commercial software GiD.

FastCap and FastHenry

FastCap and FastHenry are open-source static moment method codes designed to calculate the resistance, capacitance, and inductance of 3D geometries. They were developed at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics.

FEKO LITE

A light version of the FEKO Software from EMSS. Limited to 300 unknowns. Requires user registration.

FEMM - Finite Element Method Magnetics

A set of programs running under Windows for the finite element solution of 2D and axisymmetric magnetic and electrostatic problems. Includes a graphical preprocessor, a solver, and a graphical postprocessor. Authored by David Meeker, Ph.D.

GLMoM

GLMoM is an electromagnetic field simulation code that employs the Method of Moments and Green's functions for multilayered media.

gprMax

gprMax is 3D FDTD software developed at the University of Edinburgh. gprMax was designed for modelling Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) but can also be used to model electromagnetic wave propagation for many other applications. gprMax is command-line driven software written in Python with performance-critical parts written in Cython/OpenMP. It does not have a graphical user interface (GUI).

GSVIT

Electromagnetic Simulation Software Free Full

GSvit is open source FDTD software with support for the use of Nvidia CUDA environment compatible graphics cards. Main scientific purposes include research in nanotechnology and nanoscale optics, like scanning near-field optical microscopy, tip enhanced Raman scattering, rough surface scattering, etc. However, as FDTD is an universal method, it can be used for many other purposes.

MMANA-GAL (basic version)

A Microsoft Windows program, based on the method of moments, for simulating wire antennas This is based on NEC2 and is a limited version of the full MMANA-GAL program.

MEEP

MEEP is a free finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulation software package developed at MIT to model electromagnetic systems. Meep supports 1d/2d/3d/cylindrical problems, distributed-memory parallelism, dispersive and nonlinear media, PML boundaries, and is completely scriptable via both C++ and Scheme (GNU Guile) interfaces.

MMTL

MMTL, the Multilayer Multiconductor Transmission Line 2-D and 2.5-D electromagnetic modeling tool suite, generates transmission parameters and SPICE models from descriptions of electronics interconnect dimensions and materials properties. MMTL programs are 2-D and 2.5-D field solvers that convert dimensions and material properties into electronic design parameters. The MMTL suite consists of several programs, including lossy, loss-free, quasi-static, and full-wave simulators. Circuit parameters are computed by either the method of moments (MOM) or finite element methods (FEM). Basic per-unit-length parameters are generated by the simulator, and can be converted into HSPICE W-element models.

Multiple Multipole (MMP) Algorithms

The Multiple Multipole (MMP) algorithms were developed by Christian Hafner at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich). The algorithms have evolved and been incorporated into the commercial code, Max-1, but the original 2D and 3D source codes are still available for free at the above link.

NEC2

NEC2 - the Numerical Electromagnetics Modeling code is a widely used 3D code based on the method of moments. It was developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory more than 10 years ago and has been compiled and run on many different computer systems. NEC2 is particularly effective for analyzing wire-grid models, but also has some surface patch modeling capability. Codes are also available at Ray Anderson's Unofficial Archives at Ray Anderson's Unofficial Archives.

NEC2 uses a text interface. There a several free or inexpensive graphical interfaces that do pre- and post-processing of NEC2 models. A good free code is 4nec2, which can be found at http://www.qsl.net/4nec2/.

newFasant (silver version)

This student version includes the same functionalities as the commercial release of NewFasant, with a restriction of a maximum of 50000 subdomains for the MOM approaches, 100 surfaces for geometrical models and 25000 patch elements for the meshes. It also has a time limitation of one year, but new releases will be offered before the expiration of the previous one. This version is only available for Windows 64 bit platforms compatible with OpenGL.

openEMS

OpenEMS is a free and open-source electromagnetic field solver employing the FDTD method. It uses Matlab or Octave as a scripting interface. openEMS is licensed under the GNU General Public License, Version 3 or later.

Pic2Mag

Pic2Mag is a free program that uses colors in a graphics file to represent magnetic materials with different magnetic spin moments. Based on the magnetic spin moments it calculates the vector fields, isopotential contours, and streamlines.

pdnMesh

pdnMesh is a program that can solve 2D potential problems (Poisson Equation) and eigenvalue problems (Helmholtz Equation) using the Finite Element Method. Common applications occur in electromagnetics, heat flow and fluid dynamics. It can solve problems using both Nodal Based Formulation and Edge Based (Vector) Formulation.

Puma-EM

Provides surface Method of Moments for electromagnetics, enhanced by using the Multilevel Fast Multipole Method. Code is parallelized and runs on desktops and clusters.

Qsci

Qsci is a MATLAB script that plots the electrostatic field generated by a set of conductors using a Method of Moments approach. You can assemble some geometries, impose a voltage or total charge on conductors and Qsci will plot surface charge density, the electrostatic potential and compute capacitances.

SATE Static Field Analysis Toolkit (Educational)

The SATE 6.2 freeware from Field Precision includes the 2D programs EStat and PerMag. King kong video game pc. The education programs have full capabilities but are limited to 12,500 nodes and 8 material regions. EStat determines electric fields in dielectric or conductive media. Advanced capabilities include support for anisotropic materials and the option to define continuous variations of potential, dielectric constant or conductivity from mathematical functions. PerMag covers all aspects of magnetostatics, including saturation effects in soft materials and permanent magnets with non-linear demagnetization curves. The package includes Mesh, an automatic conformal mesh generator with a built-in drawing editor and DXF import capability.

Students' QuickField

Students' QuickField(TM), formerly known as ELCUT, is a 2D finite element simulation package solving plane and axisymmetric problems of electrostatics, nonlinear DC magnetics, AC magnetics, current flow, nonlinear heat transfer, stress analysis and coupled problems on any PC.

Sonnet Lite

A feature-limited version of Sonnet Software's planar-MOM electromagnetic simulation software.

Trace Analyzer

A nice 2-D solver for determining the transmission line parameters of printed circuit board trace geometries. It's capable of analyzing trace cross-sections consisting of many traces, planes and lossy dielectric materials. Can export RLGC parameters to HSPICE or ADS.

Wolfsim

WOLFSIM is a Finite-Difference Time-Domain electromagnetic simulator developed and maintained by researchers at North Carolina State University. The links to the documentation on the Sourceforge site are broken.

The Magnetic and Electric Field Modeling and Simulation

EMS is a magnetic and electric field modeling and simulation software. It is a versatile electromagnetic design tool as it calculates the magnetic and electric field and flux, electric potential, voltage, current, magnetic force, electric force, torque, eddy current and losses, resistance, inductance, capacitance, skin effect, proximity effect, and electromagnetic induction. The applications include transformers, motion industries, electric motor, eddy current, sensors, NDT, NDE, electrical machines, insulator, high voltage, magnets, biomedical, and induction heating. It offers the state-of-the-art accuracy and power of the finite element method and meshing technology. Whether your preferred CAD is SOLIDWORKS®, Autodesk® Inventor®, or SpaceClaim, EMS is your indispensable electromagnetic companion. In addition, EMS is Gold Certified by SOLIDWORKS® Corporation. EMS solves the basic Maxwell’s equations directly. Consequently, it can readily be used as a transformer design software, an electric motor design software, a parasitic RLC extractor, a NDT simulation software, a high voltage and high-power simulation software, and more. This versatility is further explained below.

A Transformer Software and a Calculator

EMS can be used as a transformer design software. EMS can be used to virtually study critical transformer design parameters, including:

Electromagnetic field simulation software free

Free Em Simulation Software

Energy storage

A transformer shall not store any energy but rather transfer instantaneously from input to output. Unfortunately, in real life transformers do store some undesired energy. EMS computes the leakage inductance which represents the stored energy between windings regions occupied by non-magnetic media. Similarly, EMS calculates the mutual inductance which indicates the amount of undesired stored energy in the magnetic core and small air gaps.

Losses and thermal management

EMS can calculate the maximum “hot spot” temperature rise at the core surface inside the windings center. This calculation is helpful in determining the smallest core size that meets the required power supply efficiency without exceeding the maximum “hot spot” temperature. To calculate the said temperature rise, EMS takes into consideration all transformer losses including, eddy loss, hysteresis loss, core loss, winding loss, and heat loss as well as the surrounding liquid temperature and convection properties.

Core selection

EMS calculates the magnetic flux density and saturation levels in the core which can help in selecting the proper core material, shape, and size for any frequency and desired power output. The transformer’s designer ultimately aims at choosing a shape easy to manufacture, as small of a core size as possible, and the least expensive core material while respecting the required power without saturating the core.

Open and short circuit tests

Open and short circuit tests of a transformer are critical but costly and time consuming. EMS enables the designer to virtually run these tests accurately and efficiently.

Insulation coordination

EMS calculates the dielectric breakdown which is instrumental in selecting the proper bushings, surge arrestors and other insulating infrastructure. This type of calculation helps the designer meet the various insulation coordination standards.

Short-circuit forces

EMS calculates the magnetic force acting both on the windings and the core material as well as the stress and structural displacement due to these forces. This type of calculations is helpful in guaranteeing the structural integrity of the transformer.

A Motor Software and a Calculator

EMS can be used as a motor design software and can be used to virtually study critical electric motor design parameters, including:

Parameters estimation

Winding inductance and resistance play significant role in control and state estimation of electrical motors. The example of this would be phase current control in a SRM motor or rotor position estimation in a sensor-less BLDC. EMS can determine these parameter values for a desired set of frequency and current conditions.

3D modeling problems

EMS is full 3D modeling platform. This enables simulation of some important topologies and effects which are otherwise impossible to analyze:
-Skewing of slots or rotor poles is a common technique for cogging force reduction. Its results can be estimated only if interaction between stator and rotor is captured in all 3 dimensions.
-Advanced machine topologies such as axial flux and transverse flux machines inherently operate with 3D flux distribution and should be treated as such.
-End windings have a significant effect on the winding resistance, as well as its leakage inductance.

Torque

EMS can compute transient and steady state torque profiles for various electrical machine topologies such as Permanent magnet AC machine, BLDC, Switched Reluctance, Induction etc. Torque results for different rotor RPMs and winding currents determine the optimal operating conditions. Furthermore, EMS helps minimize the cogging torque by comparing its magnitude for different air gap lengths or fractional slot pitches.

Core material

Successful machine design depends on accurate representation of nonlinear phenomenon in the core material such as flux saturation, eddy current and hysteresis losses. EMS comes with a library of predefined solid and laminated core materials. Designer can easily compare different materials in terms of the saturation, core losses and overall efficiency. Core and winding loss results can be coupled with EMS's thermal solver and determine temperature rise and cooling requirements.

Shape and sizing

Machine radius, length and number of poles will greatly determine its torque and power rating. However, finer geometrical features of the magnetic circuit have profound effect on the machine performance. For example, shape of squirrel cage bars in an Induction motor will affect how torque changes with the rotor slip. All these parameters can be readily varied inside EMS to evaluate their effect on the performance of the motor.

Parasitic RLC Extraction

EMS can be used as a parasitic RLC extractor. That is, it accurately calculates the resistance, the inductance, and the capacitance for any arbitrary 3D electric and electronics structure. These calculations take into consideration the proximity effect, the skin effect, the dielectric and ohmic loss, and the frequency dependence. In other words, both DC and AC parasitic RLC are calculated. These parasitic values are instrumental in modeling various electric and electronics devices and circuits, including:

High-speed electronics

RLC models for high-speed electronic devices such as ICs, PCBs, packages, and on-chip passive components are crucial in studying crosstalk and distortion, interconnect delays and ringing, and ground bounce.

Power converters

RLC models are useful in simulating power electronic equipment such as bus bars, cables, inverters and converters commonly found in power distribution applications, and hybrid and electric vehicles.

Touchscreen modeling

The modeling of touchscreens found in today’s smart phones and computers heavily depends on the accurate calculation of the capacitance of the screen wires.

NDT simulation software

Magnetic Simulation Software Free

Electromagnetic fields and waves are widely used in the nondestructive testing technologies. Because EMS accurately calculates the magnetic flux and eddy current, it covers a wide varies of electromagnetic NDT techniques including: eddy-current testing (ECT), magnetic flux leakage (MFL), remote field testing (RFT), magnetic particle inspection (MPI), pulses eddy current (PEC), and the alternating current field measurement (ACFM). NDT screening commonly involves the movement of the NDT probes. EMS is well-suited to model this type of motion since EMS couples to Solidworks Motion.

Solidworks and Autodesk Inventor Seamless Integration

EMS seamless integration in the three main CAD platforms empowers you to simulate the most intricate electrical machine, motor, generator, sensor, transformer, high voltage apparatus, high power machine, electrical switch, valve, actuator, PCB, levitation machine, loud speaker, permanent magnet machine, NDT equipment, inverter, converter, bus bar, inductor, bushings, or biomedical equipment. You don't need to 'reinvent the wheel', just acquire a CAD model from the mechanical drafting personnel and start your magnet or magnetic simulation instantly without any modification. If you wish to make a modification on the acquired CAD model, you won’t need to go back to the drafting personnel because commercial CAD packages such as Solidworks are parametric and hierarchical. Change it yourself 'on the fly'. If the drafting department or colleague use a different CAD package, most probably they can save it for you in Parasolid, ACIS, IGES, STEP, STL, CATIA, or ProE kernel. You then import it into SOLIDWORKS®, Autodesk® Inventor®, or Ansys SpaceClaim and continue your electromagnetic design.

Multi-Physics Capabilities

EMS is a true multi-physics software and simulation package. It enables you to couple your magnet, magnetic, and electrical design to Thermal, Structural, and Motion analyses on the same model and mesh in a hassle-free integrated environment without any need to import, export any data. This integrated multi-physics environment means: no cluttering, no jumping around, no mishmashing, no chaos, no confusion, and no mess. It also means: efficiency, accuracy, and productivity.

Electro-Thermal Analysis

Your design involves electro-thermal aspects? Easy and hands-free! Just check 'Couple to thermal' steady-state or transient in the study properties. EMS automatically computes the joule, eddy, and core losses and feeds them into the thermal solver. You may readily add non-electromagnetic heat loadings by applying volume heat, heat flux, or simply fixed temperature. Taking into account the environment conditions such as convection and radiation, EMS thermal steady-state or transient computes the temperature, temperature gradient, and heat flux and saves them to 'Thermal Results' folder.

Electro-Structural Analysis

By the same token, the electro-mechanical coupling is also easy and hands-free. The 'Couple to structural' option invokes the EMS structural solver, after transferring the local force distribution in relevant parts in addition to the mechanical loads and constraints, and then computes the displacements. The stress and strain are deduced subsequently and added to the 'Structural Results' folder as well. If the more general electro-thermo-mechanical coupling is desired, EMS transfers both the thermal and structural loads to the Thermal and Structural solvers. The Thermal solver, in turn, feeds the thermal loads to the Structural solver which computes the final displacements that reflect both the electromagnetic and the thermal loads while taking into account the magnetic, electrical, thermal, and structural environments.

Solidworks Motion integration

Electrical machines and drives usually encompass moving parts and components. Generally speaking, the resulting motion is simply rotational such as motors or translational such as linear actuators. Nevertheless, some applications such MagLev and Eddy current braking may provoke all the motion six degrees of freedom. In such case, only EMS can handle such intricate machines and equipment. Why? Because EMS couples to the most versatile and powerful mechanical motion package, Solidworks Motion®. To find out more about this robust package, please visit: https://www.solidworks.com/sw/products/simulation/motion-analysis.htm The coupling to SolidWorks Motion® is again hassle-free. After creating a SolidWorks Motion® study, simply instruct EMS to couple to it. That is it and that is all.

Grabcad, 3dcontencentral, traceparts

In recent years a burgeoning number of free 3D CAD models -millions- have become available in CAD depositories such as grabcad.com, www.3dcontentcentral.com, and www.traceparts.com. Consequently, you can simply grab a CAD model from the depositories, make necessary changes, and start your finite element analysis instantly.

EMS Results

EMS empowers you, the designer, to compute electric, magnetic, mechanical, and thermal parameters, including:
  • Electric Force
  • Electric Torque
  • Magnetic Force
  • Magnetic Torque
  • Electromagnetic Force
  • Electromagnetic Torque
  • Magnetic Flux Density
  • Magnetic Field
  • Electric Field
  • Electric Flux
  • Current Flow
  • Eddy Current
  • Inductance
  • Capacitance
  • Resistance
  • Hysterisis loss
  • Eddy loss
  • Speed
  • Acceleration
  • Stress
  • Flux Linkage
  • Core Loss
  • Breakdown Voltage
  • Lorentz Force
  • Lorentz Torque
  • Skin effect
  • Proximity effect
  • Magnetic Saturation
  • Induced Voltage
  • Force Density
  • Power Loss
  • Temperature
  • Temperature Gradient
  • Heat Flux
  • Back EMF
  • Electric flux density
  • Impedance
  • Ohmic loss
  • Displacement
  • Strain