The Design And Implementation Of Electrolytic Cell Simulation System Based On Finite Element

The rare earth is called treasure-house of the new material. Molten salt electrolysis is the common method to prepare rare earth metal, but it’s inefficient. This paper proposes to solve this problem with electromagnetic stirring electrolyzer to facilitate the flow of electrolyte in order to improve the efficiency of electrolysis. Molten salt electrolysis preparation of rare earth is too difficult to operate. Therefore, a software system is needed to simulate the electromagnetic field in electrolysis cell with electromagnetic stirring.Under the background, faced with these problems, this paper developed electrolytic cell simulation system based on finite element method. Using open source software Gmsh, this paper realized Delaunay quadrilateral meshing. Using simulation system realized two optimization algorithms, algorithm for barycenter optimization and algorithm for node numbering optimization. An electric field model of electrolysis cell and electromagnetic stirring was built and computed by open source software GetDP. This paper developed a user interface through VS2010development environment in the C++language and MFC framework, established a SQLite database for storing materials and load parameters, and finally completed the development of simulation system. The system also can simulate the electromagnetic field in electrolysis cell with electromagnetic stirring through the former processing, the simulation calculation and the post processing, including the electric current density, magnetic induction intensity and electromagnetic force. Users just need to input the parameters, and then can automatically invoke Gmsh, execute the script command, use the Delaunay algorithm, optimization algorithm and GetDP solver to complete finite element calculation and employ SQLite database to save parameters. Finally, the results can be obtained from the interface.The system is fully functional and easy to operate. So, users who are strange to FEM can make use of the system to calculate electromagnetic field of the electrolytic cell easily. According to the test results, two optimization algorithms realized using simulation system can effectively improve the accuracy of simulation and the solving efficiency. The system verifies the idea that electromagnetic stirring can greatly improve the electrolysis efficiency.