Electromagnetic Coil FEA using FEMM

After winding several coils by hand, I wished to eliminate the guesswork and model the coils using Finite Element Analysis with the freeware program FEMM.

After talking to design engineers at Buckley Systems and Wellington Drive, I realised that they are striving for focused flux lines with the absolute minimum of stray magnetic flux, which is the opposite of what I am trying to achieve.  The advice from both companies was to model the magnets myself, as the electromagnets can be resolved as a linear equation at any given point in time.  Additionally, this would give me the ability to investigate the different geometries and materials that I wanted to test.

Coil Assembly 2

Using FEMM and some online calculators I manage to create a base former/coil to use as a control and worked from there.  In order to have enough ‘pixels’ in my grid the maximum coil diameter (coil + former) was 8mm and 40mm high. Thus the control coil was:

Outer Diameter      8mm

Height                      40mm

Wire Diameter       0.5mm

Coil Windings        320x

Current                   1 Ampere

Coil Former           Pure Iron

Finite Element Method Magnetics models coils axisymmetrically, and shows the output in Tesla with the pink regions being the strongest at round 0.001T:

Single 40mm Vanadium Permendur Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A Single 40mm Powdered Iron Sintered-Annealed Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Single 40mm MuMetal Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead) Single 40mm M47 Steel Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead Single 40mm M15 Steel Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 1 x 80 Turns at 1.A (Flathead) Single 40mm Copper Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead) Single 40mm Aluminium Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead Single 40mm Air Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead) Single 40mm 416 S-Steel Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathe Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.25 x 1280 Turns at 1.A (Flathe Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x Short 240 Turns at 1.A (Fl Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x Shhort 160 Turns at 1.A (F Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x Short 80 Turns at 1.A (Fla Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 8A (Flathead) Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 4A (Flathead) Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 2A (Flathead) Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Inverted Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Flathead Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Cone Hea Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 1.A (Concave Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 0.25A (Flathe Single 40mm Pure Iron Core 40 x 0.5 x 320 Turns at 0.5A (Flathea

 

 

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