A Sliding Surface Technique Incorporating Radial Basis Functions for Movement Simulation in 2-D Models of Rotating Machines

The paper presents an alternative approach to the well-known sliding surface technique by using radial basis functions as interpolants in a rotating machine air-gap. The proposed technique allows for easy handling of non-uniformly distributed nodes at the sliding interface. The method is shown to have general applicability to any kind of an electrical machine. It is observed that non-uniformly generated meshes reduce computational error due to mesh inconsistency, which appears when subdomains are coupled using first-order triangular elements in the region of a machine air-gap.