Induction heating processes modelling: optimisation procedure and parallel computing

This paper presents work on the direct modelling and optimisation of induction heating processes. We first introduce the direct model and the ultra-weak coupling strategy developed to deal with these problems. The optimisation problem is then introduced. We wanted to determine the optimal process or control parameters (current intensity, frequency, etc.) in order to get the temperature field or temperature evolution as close as possible to prescribed requirements. The optimisation procedure uses an adjoint method to compute temperature sensitivities with respect to the process parameters and a linear descent algorithm to determine the parameters that will minimise the cost function. The computational costs being quite expensive, we have developed and implemented a parallel computation strategy for the direct model and the optimisation procedure. This strategy is based on an SPMD domain partitioning method. Performance measurements in terms of CPU time have been carried out on industrial applications and are presented.