Finite elements for magnetic fields in hysteretic media

Codes for the calculation of magnetic field distributions in two and three dimensions are now widely available; however, they generally do not permit to account for phenomena such as hysteresis remanence and anisotropy. The modeling of these phenomena is important in the design of power devices and essential in magnetic recording technology. In this thesis, magneto-statics is formulated without making any superfluous assumption about the constitutive relation. The nature of the relation between M and H is thoroughly discussed and computationally tractable models of this same relation are critically examined. The difficulties inherent to the application of the finite element method in conjunction with the utilization of these models are discussed. An experimental finite element code has been developed and validated with two test problems