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The paper proposes presenting a transient 3D‐FE computation approach of the eddy current losses in the rail and the flux concentrating pieces of a magnetically levitated conveyor vehicle.

The calculation process is started with a coarse mesh in order to reduce computation time without losing accuracy. Then mesh refinement iterations are performed, based on the estimation of the discretisation error. The results of the post processing are the levitation force, the braking force and the eddy current losses.

The paper finds that by means of adaptive mesh refinement, the error is significantly reduced with a minimum increase of computation time. The hot spots of eddy current losses can be localised by visualizing the eddy current density. At nominal speed, especially the huge amount of eddy current losses in the flux concentrating pieces must be considered during the development process.

For further development, the linear motor will be modified with the results of FE computations to reduce eddy current losses. Therefore, different materials and a variation of geometry will be considered.

Magnetically levitated systems excite eddy current losses instead of bearing losses. These losses must be taken into account when developing the drive.

It proposes a transient 3D‐FE approach for computing eddy current losses accurately with a minimum increase of computation time.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a design process for a drive of a ventricular assist device (VAD) under the consideration of constraints given by the application. In this case, these constraints are the possibility to implant the VAD system, providing a sufficient perfusion of the human body and cutting down development costs.

In the described approach an optimization algorithm is integrated in the initial stage of the design process for a drive system.

During simulations the optimum drive design under the implantation constraints of the given VAD system is found. The key constraints of this design, which are torque, axial force and losses, are validated during initial test bench measurements of a drive prototype.

The described design process enables an optimum drive design from the beginning of a VAD development. This reduces the time to initial and chronic in vivo test, which are required to be approved for the market later. Therefore, this approach cuts development and device costs. Additionally, this design process can be transferred for the design of other drive concepts and applications.

The developed and proved method in this paper enables a competitive and reliable drive design.

A fundamental disadvantage of three‐dimensional finite element (FE) simulations is high computational cost when compared to two‐dimensional models. The purpose of this paper is to present an approach to minimize the computation time by achieving the same simulation accuracy.

The applied approach for avoiding high computational cost is the multi‐slice method. This paper presents the adoption of this method to a tubular linear motor.

It is demonstrated that the multi‐slice method is applicable for tubular linear motors. Furthermore, the number of slices and thereby computation time is minimized at the same accuracy of the simulation results.

The results of this paper offer a faster computation of skewed linear motors. At this juncture, the results are independent from the deployed FE solver.

The methods developed and proved permit a faster and more accurate design of tubular linear motors.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the RWTH's total artificial heart, ReinHeart, focusing on the design of the unique drive system.

The force characteristics of the drive have been simulated in a finite element (FE) approach. Additionally the coppler losses within the motor coils have been predicted based on the FE‐simulation. Both results are compared to laboratory measurements of a prototype to validate the design.

The presented results show a good correlation between simulation and measurement and proof the applicability of the new design drive system.

The used hydraulic models of the cardiovasular system used as a load for the device are not fully validated with data from living organisms. Therefore, further in vivo trials are needed.

The high force density of the drive allows its integration into a fully implantable, total artificial heart, in order to significantly improve durability. This hopefully will extend the indication for artificial hearts as alternatives to transplantation.