Simulating electromagnetic interactions to ensure optimal designs and create cutting-edge appliances

About the customer

Mabe manufactures home appliances, including stoves, refrigerators, washing machines, dryers, water purifiers and more. The company is based in Mexico City and markets its white goods under its own brand as well as several others, including GE Appliances, in more than 70 countries. Mabe is an early leader in the development of connected products that allow its customer service personnel to monitor the health of its appliances in the field.

Siemens Digital Industries Software has been at the center of Mabe’s product development process for years, and Mabe is now working with Siemens to deploy and enhance its connected products strategy.

Their challenge

Mabe continuously upgrades its products by integrating cutting-edge technology – particularly in the realm of electronics – to enable connectivity and increase their products’ value. In this project, Mabe wanted to incorporate electronics into its range hoods to facilitate wireless communication between the hood and a control system. To achieve this objective, it was crucial that Mabe analyze the power emanating from the range hood’s new wireless communication electronic board. After assembly, the conductive material of the hood’s body could redirect or shield electromagnetic radiation, causing poor communication link performance.

The company needed to perform electromagnetic simulations that predicted the module’s radiation patterns when installed in various locations within the hood. The optimal location would help meet safety and electromagnetic interference requirements while providing a robust, reliable communication link.

A kitchen hood with fully metallic structure

Our solution

Since this project was a new frontier for Mabe’s engineering team, Siemens assisted the team by providing software training and overall guidance. Once completed, the team began by conducting a comprehensive investigation to test conditions, hardware specifications, radiation patterns and design constraints to define the simulation’s parameters.

Utilizing Simcenter™ Feko™ software, which is part of the Siemens Xcelerator business platform of software, hardware and services, the team embarked on developing a simulation model designed to calculate the new module’s radiated far field and electric field. The team’s primary objective was to minimize the electromagnetic interference caused by the metallic material surrounding the wireless communication module.

The study also involved the creation of an optimized 3D model of the range hood, encompassing its main components, materials, structure and antenna placement. Given the large electrical size of the range hood’s body, the engineering team employed specific numerical solvers within Simcenter Feko to address the problem’s computational requirements. By altering the component and system variables while adhering to design constraints and appearance specifications, Mabe obtained useful results for the radiation pattern, far field and electric field radiation.

A mesh generated in Simcenter Feko

Results

This project, powered by Simcenter Feko, delivered significant value to Mabe. The alignment between the simulated and physical results validated the simulations’ accuracy, affirming the capability of Simcenter Feko to accurately represent and solve problems. Furthermore, this project helped the Mabe team improve their skills with Simcenter Feko and get more comfortable using the software.

“Using Simcenter Feko helps us simulate electromagnetic interactions, ensuring optimal designs and enabling the creation of cutting-edge appliances that redefine these appliances’ functionality and user experience,” says Gabriel Olguin, design engineer at Mabe.

Ensuring the wireless module’s proper functioning in this hood helps Mabe meet its goal of evolving to smart and connected products. These products give their engineers useful real-world performance data they can use to create more efficient products and systems.

These insights underscore the importance of combining computational simulation and physical experimentation while investigating electromagnetic phenomena. They also emphasize the pressing need to develop and enhance the teams’ technological capabilities in both domains to achieve advancements in the understanding and applying electromagnetic phenomenon.