Modeling and Measuring an Electromagnetic Coil in ANSYS HFSS

[CopyOfA]

I've been attempting to model a simple electromagnetic coil using HFSS, and have so far been unsuccessful. I have no problems constructing the coil; this is a simple geometry problem. I have a wire of a known geometry with insulation surrounding the wire, then a construct a helical path and then sweep along the path. So, once I have the coil constructed, I can't seem to figure out how to produce results. What I'd like to do is a simple impedance measurement (or several at different frequencies). From what I've gathered, I should excite the coil with a current source, but I am not very confident beyond that. Is there anyone here who knows HFSS and may have a suggestion for how to best accomplish this? Should I put an infinite ground plane nearby? Should I put the coil in a box? How do I measure the impedance of the coil?

One of the challenges is that the meshing of the coil takes quite a long time, so the trial & error turnover rate is slow.

 

[Illmatic1]

The best approach would be to use a transmission line model to measure the impedance of the coil. This is because it is relatively easy to set up and simulate, and it will allow you to quickly compare different coils and frequencies. The basic setup is to have a port at each end of the coil, with a source connected to one port and a load connected to the other. You then vary the frequency of the source and sweep through the range of interest to measure the voltage and current on each port. From this you can calculate the impedance of the coil. To ensure the accuracy of the results, you should pay attention to the mesh settings. Make sure that the mesh is fine enough to accurately capture the geometry of the coil, and that the mesh size is not too small compared to the wavelength of the signal being propagated through the coil. This will ensure that the simulation is capturing all of the relevant effects and producing accurate results.Once your simulation is complete, you can analyze the results and compare different coils and frequencies to determine the optimal coil design.