Computer-aided education for magnetostatics

We present in this paper a computer-aided education (CAE) package allowing to visualize the magnetostatic field in and around the magnetic circuit of a double-U shaped contactor. The modeling of this device is performed by so lving in real time a nonlinear finite-element problem. The implementation o f this method is optimized greatly in order to allow to animate held patter ns in real time in reaction to any user interaction. An evaluation of the i mprovements brought by this technique to the learning capabilities of stude nts is presented.