The evaluation of dynamic characteristics is crucial for the reliability and optimal design of AC contactors

and the combination of digital prototype models and experimental measurements provides a novel approach to evaluating dynamic characteristics. However

the existing commercial finite element software has many problems

such as long time consumption and poor convergence when solving the digital prototype model. In response

a parallel finite element computation method for the dynamic characteristics of AC contactors based on the transmission line method (TLM) is presented in this paper to realize the accelerated solution of the dynamic characteristics of AC contactors. The method first utilizes the finite element method (FEM) and field-circuit coupling to establish a digital prototype model of electromagnetic-force coupling of AC contactors. Then

the triangular elements of the FEM model are equivalent to circuit models and transmission line models based on the TLM

and this method effectively decouples the nonlinear problems into linear networks and nonlinear networks. The nonlinear networks are equivalent to multiple independent circuits

allowing massively parallel computation of elements. The accuracy of the TLM in the calculation of the dynamic characteristics of the AC contactor is verified by comparing the results with the commercial FEM software COMSOL Multiphysics® and experimentally measured. Compared to the solving time of the dynamic characteristics with COMSOL Multiphysics®

the TLM is 2.46 times faster than COMSOL Multiphysics®.