Hi
I can give a few advises to your question:
1) start in 2D until your model is behaving in a way you fully understand (as it computes rapidly), a "axisymmetric" 1/2 of a sphere could be a good starting point.
There are always two issue with symmetry, your geometrie is symmetric, and/or the BC (boundary conditions) are symmetric (or anti-symmetric). If both geometry and BC are symmetric you are lucky you can remain in simplified symmetry modelling, if not you will end up to do a full 3D model.
Note that you cannot copy/symmetry a mesh, as you can with a geometry (unfortunatey) one (false in my view) reason is that the mesh inherits its material ad BC properties from the surfaces it "belongs" to. For me it could still be handy to be able to make a symmetric mesh, perhaps by first generating the symmetric geometry but for that you must still write your own script code, what is fully possible.
finally with symmetry you might need to perform 2 calculations with symmetric and with anti-symmetric BC conditions. I do not have an example just like that in AC/DC but in structural for modal analysis, you need to repeat your calculations to get all modes, otherwise you forget 1 mode upon 2 !
for the solvers, I would le COMSOL choose and use its default, at least to start with.
for the 3D images (for me this would be a second step once a simple "speherical model" is running 80%, you should search some of the other discussions hereby, or try COMSOl support
Good luck
Ivar
I can give a few advises to your question:
1) start in 2D until your model is behaving in a way you fully understand (as it computes rapidly), a "axisymmetric" 1/2 of a sphere could be a good starting point.
There are always two issue with symmetry, your geometrie is symmetric, and/or the BC (boundary conditions) are symmetric (or anti-symmetric). If both geometry and BC are symmetric you are lucky you can remain in simplified symmetry modelling, if not you will end up to do a full 3D model.
Note that you cannot copy/symmetry a mesh, as you can with a geometry (unfortunatey) one (false in my view) reason is that the mesh inherits its material ad BC properties from the surfaces it "belongs" to. For me it could still be handy to be able to make a symmetric mesh, perhaps by first generating the symmetric geometry but for that you must still write your own script code, what is fully possible.
finally with symmetry you might need to perform 2 calculations with symmetric and with anti-symmetric BC conditions. I do not have an example just like that in AC/DC but in structural for modal analysis, you need to repeat your calculations to get all modes, otherwise you forget 1 mode upon 2 !
for the solvers, I would le COMSOL choose and use its default, at least to start with.
for the 3D images (for me this would be a second step once a simple "speherical model" is running 80%, you should search some of the other discussions hereby, or try COMSOl support
Good luck
Ivar