Finite Element Method Magnetics

David Meeker 04Jan2014

Introduction

The problem of computing the impedance of a system about a DC operating point arises with regularity during the study of electric machines. Two examples are:

• Computation of the frequency-dependent impedance of a Loudspeaker Driver about the DC operating point created by a permanent magnet;
• Computation of frequency-dependent impedance of a radial magnetic bearing about the DC operating point created by bias currents in the coils.

A recent version of FEMM 4.3 has the capability of computing incremental permeability solutions based on the DC operating point simulated in a linked solution. This note explains the incremental permeability formulation and demonstrates its use through a tutorial example.