Concept

Threshold density — where it appears

How the switching thresholds of a hysteresis model's play operators are distributed. A major loop barely sees its shape — four very different densities matched on one coercivity agree on remanence and loss to about a per cent — while the small-signal loss exponent runs from cubic to quartic across the same four.

Named by 3 essays across one field — each of them below, with the objects they name alongside it.

The winding current a hysteretic core asks for, and the current the same circuit's single-valued core asks for. computed by solving, not by drawing. One netlist — a 22.6 volt peak sinusoid at 5.00 kHz through 4 ohms into a sixty-turn winding — marched twice, once with the core as a superposition of play operators and once with the single-valued saturating curve every earlier figure in this field used. The two currents differ in shape and not only in size: the hysteretic one leads the flux by an angle that is not ninety degrees, which is the whole of the core loss, and its peak is 59.45 milliamperes against 50.12. The energy the source delivers over a complete cycle is 17.19 microjoules for the loop and 2.5e-5 for the curve, which is zero to the resolution of the march. The slider takes the flux the drive demands from a twentieth of the material's saturation to most of it.

The core the solver has to remember

A saturating inductor's state is one number, because the current is a function of the flux linkage. A hysteretic core's is not: half an amp is one flux on the way up and a different flux on the way down, and there is no function of the current that returns the flux. So the march's state vector gains twenty-four more numbers, one per play operator, and the Newton loop is forbidden to touch them. The circuit and the bench then agree on the loss to three parts in ten million — one integral taken at two wires, the other inside the material.

magnetics · Magnetic loss
Four threshold densities, all matched to the same measured coercivity. computed by solving, not by drawing. Every hysteresis figure below this one used a uniform density of play-operator thresholds, and the reason given was that a uniform density makes the small-signal loss law come out cubic — Rayleigh's law, which is what soft ferrites do. That is a real constraint and it is a weak one. These four are all bisected to a measured coercivity of 9 amperes per metre on a deeply driven loop, and they need threshold spreads from 30.1 to 76.0 amperes per metre to get there. The slider moves the coercivity they are all matched to.

The distribution the bench cannot see

Six rungs of this ladder assumed a uniform density of operator thresholds, and the reason given was that a uniform density makes the small-signal law come out cubic. That reason is weaker than it looks: every density finite at the origin does the same. Matched on a measured coercivity, four distributions whose spreads differ by 2.5 times give the same remanence to 0.6 per cent, the same loop area to 1.0, and the same branch-slope ratio to 0.54 — and small-signal exponents from 2.81 to 3.81. The major loop cannot see the shape and the small signal cannot see anything else.

magnetics · Magnetic loss
A core walked from lossless to lossy, and the three straight lines it walks along. computed by solving, not by drawing. Loop area, measured coercivity and measured remanence against the threshold spread the model was handed, over five decades of it, driven sinusoidally to ±400 A/m. None of the three is an input: the area is ∮H dB round the marched loop, the coercivity is interpolated where the descending branch crosses zero, and the remanence is read at zero field. Over the lowest four decades all three are exactly proportional to the spread — 0.625961 joules per cubic metre per ampere-metre of spread, a coercivity 0.4499 of it and a remanence of 1.1304 millitesla per ampere-metre — and at 80 A/m the area is 2.69 per cent below the line and the remanence 16.42 per cent, because the pinned operators have reached the flat of the magnetisation curve. At zero the area is 9.8e-15 J/m³, which is the single-valued core the rungs below this one measured.

One dissipation, two exponents

The core this ladder built takes two numbers — a threshold spread and the fraction of the magnetisation that follows the field with no threshold — and seven rungs moved the first and left the second at 0.55 without ever saying why. The first decides how much loss there is: area, coercivity and remanence are all exactly proportional to it over four decades, at 0.625961 joules per cubic metre, 0.449775 and 1.130408 millitesla per ampere-metre of spread, the last two of which are closed forms. The second decides nothing about the loss at all — it is single-valued, so it contributes exactly zero to the loop area, to twelve digits — and it moves the Steinmetz exponent from 1.5042 to 2.9860.

magnetics · Magnetic loss

Named alongside it

The objects these essays reach for when they reach for this one.

Magnetic lossPlay operatorB h loopCoercivityCoreRemanenceAir gapHysteresisIncremental inductanceMarchingModel rangeNewton raphson

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