Main Dimensions of a DC Machine-C++ Program

Well I think I have written about my love for “Electrical Machine Design” or “Design of Electrical Apparatus” even earlier. The best part is in real life DEA is done using computer algorithms. (Well I would guess with some aid from operators.) Well you see the difference between Electrical related Software and others is that the former can never be made completely fool proof. Meaning you would have to know what you are dealing with if you want to use the program. One of my other interests is of-course coding. This whole semester, the only thing I found engaging in college was the “Power System Simulation Lab”. So I decided to try a bit of coding for DEA.

I set out to write a simple program that would find the main dimensions of the machine provided with the necessary input. I am not posting the code or links to the .exe file downloads just yet because I think it needs some refinement. Also I think it would be a better idea to test it extensively before releasing the same. I do intend to release them later though.

I wrote a program that took into account the various possible inputs such that the user would not have to do much of manual calculations himself. But there’s a thin line between writing a good program and writing more code than is necessary. So I have left a few chinks in the armour for now and hence it will not calculate for any data you provide it. For instance you either have to input the Power Developed in the armature ‘Pa’ or the Rated Power Output of the machine ‘P’ combined with the efficiency. I have however not added the option of entering the armature voltage and current as of now. So you would be required to manually calculate power from them. (I could easily have done this and maybe I will before I upload the source code.)

Another issue as of now is that I am not going to perform any constraint checks. Well this is a little complicated. It’s definitely do-able, but I’ll reserve that too for later. I tried it out on a couple of problems from “A Course in Electrical Machine Design” by A.K.Sawhney and thankfully it worked. (Not that there is anything to it) I am simply presenting screen shots of the outputs along with the problem numbers.

Example 9.1:

Example 9.2:

Having used MATLAB, I find finding errors in C++ a bit painful. With M-files, you can check values of variables in the Main Window (Isn’t it called that ?) and find out where you have gone wrong. But of-course C++ has features that MATLAB doesn’t. Both have their own advantages.