COMPLEMENTARY 2-D FINITE-ELEMENT PROCEDURES FOR THE MAGNETIC-FIELD ANALYSIS USING A VECTOR HYSTERESIS MODEL

The main purpose of this paper is to incorporate a refined hysteresis model, viz., a vector Preisach model, in 2-D magnetic field computatio ns. Two complementary formulations, based either on the scalar or on t he vector potential, are considered. The governing Maxwell equations a re rewritten in a suitable way, that allows to take into account the p roper magnetic material parameters and, moreover, to pass to a variati onal formulation. The variational problems are solved numerically by a Finite Element approximation, using a quadratic mesh, followed by a t ime discretization method based upon a modified Cranck-Nicholson algor ithm. Finally, the effectiveness of the presented mathematical tools h ave been confirmed by several numerical experiments, comparing the com plementarity of the two procedures. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.