Technical Papers and Presentations

Accurate modeling of magnetostrictive materials and devices requires coupling of electrical, magnetic, mechanical, and possibly acoustic domains. There are relatively few finite  element software packages that include all these physical models and even fewer that include magnetostrictive models. Comsol Multiphysics was used to create linear magnetostrictive models with fully coupled physics. Two-dimensional and  three dimensional models were generated using the AC/DC and structural mechanics modules. Coupling between the domains was implemented by adding appropriate terms to the subdomain variables for stress and magnetic field. Results from models compare favorably with experimental data for a Terfenol-D transducer. Impedance, phase, and displacement data showed very good agreement between COMSOL and experiments.