LMAG-ZD is an educational Finite-ElementAnalysis software package with CAD/CAE technology used to teach the finite element method to undergraduate and graduate students of electrical engineering. A user-friendly interface encapsulates the technical complexity of the method, allowing students and professionals, even in their first contact with this methodology, to appreciate its relevance to practical problems. LMAG-2D can be used to simulate complex two dimensional "real-world" electrostatic, magnetostatic and electrokinetic models, with planar and axial symmetries. Linear and nonlinear phenomena can also be simulated.
I INTRODUCTIONSeveral Finite-Element Analysis (FEA) software packages using CAD/CAE technologies have been developed in the past hvo decades for industrial and research applications. Nowadays, commercial FEA packages can be purchased at low cost popularizing their use for design purposes in engineering.These software packages became the most powerful tools in engineering, including electrical engineering, not only for complex devices analysis and design but also to analyse the results of nondestructive tests.to prepare the new generations of electrical engineers, graduate and undergraduate courses on the finite element method (FEM) were introduced in the electrical engineering curriculum at the Escola PolitCcnica da Universidade de S2o Paulo (EPUSP). These courses provide the fundamental concepts of the FEM and present related topics such as: automatic mesh generation, efficient algorithms to store sparse matrices, numerical methods to solve linear and nonlinear problems.In general, the mathematical techniques applied in the FEM, e.g., variational analysis and the Galerkin method, are not taught in undergraduate courses. In an attempt to make an introductory course of the FEM more accessible to the undergraduate students, one of the authors developed a special mathematical formulation to introduce the In order Manuscript received March 19, 1996 N M Abe, e-mail nancyapea usp br, J R Cardoso, e-mail cardoso@pea usp br, fax +55-1l-XlX-5719, A Passaro, e-mail angelo@ieav cta br two-dimensional (2D) FEM formalism, based on the direct integration of Maxwell equations for the first-order triangular finite elements. The formulation proposed initially uses Ampike's Law to construct the FE-system equations for magnetostatic phenomena [3]. extended to electrostatic phenome to electrokinetic phenomena using the continuity equation. These formulations provided a more intuitive understanding of the method for undergraduate students, avoiding advanced mathematical concepts. They have been used in both the graduate and undergraduate FEM courses from that time on.The FEM courses, in the first years, were effective to teach the mathematical concepts necessary to understand the FEM and to present related computational and numerical techniques. Many useful computational subroutines and computer programs were developed by graduate and undergraduate students during school terms.However, the courses were ineffective to...