A Field Simulator for Permanent Magnet Applications

E. Ledwosinska [1], J. Gammel [1]
[1] Silicon Labs, Austin, TX, USA
Published in 2016

Permanent magnets are ubiquitous in our world today, from refrigerator magnets to industrial sensor applications. Often, the magnitude of the field at a specific distance from an arbitrarily shaped magnet of variable strength is a necessary parameter for end-use systems. We used the the AC/DC module of the COMSOL Multiphysics® software to simulate field strength of permanent magnets for aiding application optimization. We executed various simulations to establish optimal magnet and detector arrangement for maximal/minimal field strength and alignment tolerance. Magnet geometry, remnant flux density, and surrounding material parameters were varied. Finally, we used the Application Builder of the COMSOL® software to design a comprehensive GUI for users to input material, distance, and geometrical parameters to simulate B-field and dispersion along different axes.