ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 320 (2008) 2436–2442

www.elsevier.com/locate/jmmm

Connection between microstructure and magnetic properties

of soft magnetic materials
G. Bertotti
INRIM-Istituto Nazionale di Ricerca Metrologica, Strada delle Cacce 91, 10135 Torino, Italy
Available online 7 April 2008

Abstract

The magnetic behavior of soft magnetic materials is discussed with some emphasis on the connection between macroscopic properties
and underlying micromagnetic energy aspects. It is shown that important conceptual gaps still exist in the interpretation of macroscopic
magnetic properties in terms of the micromagnetic formulation. Different aspects of hysteresis modeling, power loss prediction and
magnetic non-destructive evaluation are discussed in this perspective.
r 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PACS: 75.60.d

Keywords: Micromagnetics; Magnetic hysteresis; Hysteresis model; Power loss; Non-destructive evaluation

1. Introduction structures from structural information about the particular

The behavior of soft magnetic materials is dominated by
magnetostatic effects. Through careful adjustment of
relevant microstructural factors (e.g., grain size, crystal-
lographic texture, induced anisotropies) this results in a
wide variety of domain arrangements [1], whereby one can
tailor the magnetic response of the material to specific
needs. There are cases where domain structures take
remarkable simplicity, like the bar-like domains observed
in grain-oriented silicon steels or in magnetostrictive
amorphous ribbons under stress. On the other hand, it is
by no means obvious to get detailed information about the
seemingly complex domain structures that are responsible
for the hysteretic response of fine-grained materials like
non-oriented silicon steels, where grain size is of the order
of 50–100 mm and magnetic domain size is accordingly
smaller.
Prediction of magnetic domain structures is a funda-
mental part of the comprehension of soft magnetic
materials. However, the derivation of magnetic domain
Tel.: +39 11 3919 835; fax: +39 11 3919 834.
E-mail address: g.bertotti@inrim.it
URL: http://www.inrim.it
system considered is a problem of formidable difficulty.
The theoretical formulation of this problem in terms of
energy minimization is known in the literature under the
name of micromagnetics [1–4].
Micromagnetics is the leading theoretical approach used
to describe the behavior of magnetic materials at scales
where atomic granularity is not resolved and the material is
described as a continuous medium whose magnetic state is
defined by the magnetization vector as a function of
position inside the body. The physical foundation of
micromagnetics was laid by Landau and Lifshitz [5]. It
was then given a clear variational formulation by Brown
[6,7], who showed the form taken by the micromagnetic
free energy functional and discussed how minimization of
this functional may lead in principle to predictions for the
large variety of magnetic configurations observed in
ferromagnetic bodies.
Few analytical solutions are known for micromagnetics,
due to the complex nonlinear nature of the equations
involved. Conversely, numerical micromagnetics has ac-
quired a leading role after computing power has become a
broadly available resource. Nowadays, micromagnetic
simulations are of key importance in micrometer or
sub-micrometer applications to magnetic recording and

0304-8853/$ - see front matter r 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.jmmm.2008.04.001
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
G. Bertotti / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 320 (2008) 2436–2442
magneto-electronics [8]. In this area, attention has in fact
shifted from the original micromagnetic goal of reconstruct-
ing the distribution of the energy minima responsible for
hysteresis to the time integration of the Landau–Lifshitz–
Gilbert equation governing magnetization dynamics [9].
In contrast to the widespread use of micromagnetic
codes in magnetic recording and magnetic nanotechnology
developments, challenging difficulties are still encountered
in the application of numerical micromagnetics to bulk
materials dominated by structural disorder. Configurations
minimizing the micromagnetic free energy are the result of
the competition of various energy contributions: ferromag-
netic exchange, crystal and induced anisotropies, magneto-
elastic interactions, magnetostatic interactions. Of these,
magnetostatic effects are long-ranged and prevent any
possibility of reducing the energy minimization problem to
a set of local problems in individual volumes of the
material. Micromagnetic states are usually characterized by
fine spatial oscillations (presence of magnetic domains and
domain walls) down to sub-micrometer scales. At the same
time, the consequences of magnetostatic interactions are
revealed only at the macroscopic scale set by the body
geometrical dimensions. This makes full-detail simulations
of bulk systems computationally prohibitive. An exception
is represented by micromagnetic investigations of bulk
permanent magnets [10]. However, in that case the
exceeding strength of local crystal-anisotropy forces makes
large-scale magnetostatic effects of secondary importance
and justifies the assumption that simulations of small
aggregates of few crystalline grains may be representative
of the behavior of bulk materials. These simplifying
assumptions completely fail for soft magnetic materials,
where the strength of crystal anisotropy is smaller than that
of magnetostatic interactions.
The impossibility of developing rigorous micromagnetic
tools for the description of bulk magnetic materials is
reflected by the numerous phenomenological hysteresis
models that have been proposed for the treatment of bulk
properties. A similar situation is encountered in power loss
modeling, where losses are estimated by making a certain
number of phenomenological assumptions about magneti-
zation processes.
A feature of great potential clearly expressed by the
micromagnetic formulation is the intimate connection
existing between microstructural aspects (presence of
secondary phases, dislocations, grain size, texture, aniso-
tropies) and magnetic domain configurations or magneti-
zation processes. This means that the macroscopic
magnetic behavior of a material must reflect its micro-
structural state and thus in principle can provide a great
deal of information about microstructural features [11].
This is the main reason why the development of
nondestructive tools for magnetic inspection of materials
and products has attracted and is still attracting consider-
able attention.
A case of importance is represented by steel processing,
where complex sequences of casting/rolling/annealing steps
2437
are used to tune the steel microstructure in order to achieve
final products with homogeneous properties within the
desired acceptance intervals. Here, magnetic testing can
lead to more effective process control, with the ability to
identify within short times the causes for unexpected
deviations from desired product quality. In addition, a
point which should not be overlooked is that magnetic
inspection can be operated without contact on moving
products, a decisive feature for on-line testing inside steel-
making plants. On the other hand, magnetic testing is of
broad interest in the inspection of operating components
for the early detection of damage or approach to failure.
An example is the case of radiation damage in nuclear
reactor vessels [12].
The main issue in magnetic testing methods is that the
correlation between testing results and the microstructural/
mechanical properties of interest is often built up by crude
empirical methods leading to look-up tables for individual
products which say little about the origin of undesired
deviations from expected product quality or operation.
This state of affairs reflects the fact that there still exists a
conceptual gap in the comprehension of the relationship
between bulk magnetic properties and the underlying
microscale coupling of magnetization to structural dis-
order. Starting from the classical formulation of micro-
magnetics, the connection between microstructural and
magnetic aspects could in principe be better revealed by
resorting to intermediate-scale formulations of the ener-
getics of a ferromagnet, valid for polycrystals on the scale
of the grain size. These formulations may be based on
asymptotic models recently proposed in the literature [13],
which permit one to work out the form taken by the free
energy of a ferromagnetic polycrystal when the spatial
resolution used to describe the problem does not resolve
the details of the magnetic domain structure present in each
grain. Developments based on this general framework
could lead to the implementation of efficient numerical
codes for the simulation of the connection between
microstructural disorder and magnetic properties under
realistic conditions, close to the ones encountered in steel
industry and in non-destructive magnetic evaluation.
2. Micromagnetics and multiscale approaches
In micromagnetics, the state of a ferromagnetic body is
described by the vector field MðrÞ representing the local
magnetization at every point r inside the body. For
ferromagnets well below their Curie temperature, exchange
interactions prevail over all other forces at short spatial
scales. This fact is taken into account by imposing that the
magnitude of the local magnetization vector must be equal
to the spontaneous magnetization Ms : jMðrÞj ¼ Ms . Con-
versely, the orientation of MðrÞ is in general nonuniform,
i.e., it varies from point to point. At equilibria, the spatial
distribution of these orientations must correspond to a
minimum of the Gibbs–Landau free energy G L ðMð:Þ; Ha Þ of
the system, where Ha represents the externally applied
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2438 G. Bertotti / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 320 (2008) 2436–2442
magnetic field. In micromagnetics, the free energy GL for a
ferromagnetic body occupying the region O is expressed as
the following volume integral:
Z "
A micromagnetic scale to the coarse scale by multiscale
G L ðMð:Þ; Ha Þ ¼ 2
ððrMx Þ2 þ ðrMy Þ2 þ ðrMz Þ2 Þ
O Ms
# proaches may be effective in capturing the essential aspects
m0
þ f AN ðMÞ  M  HM  m0 M  Ha dV .
2 hysteresis phenomena [14].
(1)
The first term inside the integral represents the exchange
energy (A is the so-called exchange stiffness constant,
typically of the order of 1011 J=m), f AN ðMÞ describes
crystal anisotropy effects, while the two last terms
represent magnetostatic energy and energy of interaction
with the applied field Ha . The magnetostatic contribution is
governed by the associated magnetostatic field HM , which
is solution of magnetostatic Maxwell equations:
r  HM ¼ 0; r  HM ¼ r  M, (2)
subject to the appropriate interface conditions at the body
surface. The micromagnetic free energy may contain
additional terms describing other mechanisms, like for
example magnetoelastic interactions, which have not been
included in the simplified expression above.
The equilibrium magnetization states under given
applied field Ha correspond to the condition dGL ¼ 0,
where dG L represents the free energy variation with respect
to arbitrary variations of the vector field MðrÞ subject to
the constraint jMðrÞj ¼ Ms . By using standard variational
calculus, one obtains that dG L ¼ 0 if at each point in O the
following equation is satisfied (Brown’s equation):
M  Heff ¼ 0. (3)
Here Heff represents the effective field, defined as
Heff ¼ HEX þ HAN þ HM þ Ha , (4)
HEX and HAN being the exchange field and the anisotropy
field, respectively:
2A 1 qf AN
HEX ¼ r2 M; HAN ¼  . (5)
m0 M2s m0 qM
Eq. (3) expresses the fact that the local torque exerted on
the magnetization by the effective field must be zero at
equilibrium. However, this equation determines all possible
magnetization equilibria regardless of their stability.
According to the thermodynamic principle of free energy
minimization, only G L minima will correspond to stable
equilibria which can be in principle physically observable.
The information on the nature of equilibria can be
obtained by deriving the second variation of GL and
determining if it is positive under arbitrary variations of the
vector field MðrÞ, subject to the constraint jMðrÞj ¼ Ms .
Micromagnetic equations are complex nonlinear equa-
tions giving detailed information about the local orienta-
tion of magnetization at each point inside the body.
However, for bulk materials, such complete information
about all micromagnetic details is seldom needed. The
large-scale behavior of the body is expected to depend only
on robust qualitative features emerging when one develops
appropriate coarse-graining methods, and one connects the
techniques [13]. At the same time, thermodynamic ap-
of the macroscopic behavior, first of all the appearance of
A first remarkable example of coarse-graining theory of
this sort is Néel phase theory for bulk single crystals (see
Ref. [3] for an overview). This theory is based on the
assumption that the magnetic state of the body can be des-
cribed in terms of the relative volume fractions (magnetic
phases) magnetized along the various anisotropy directions
in the crystal, all details about the size and orientation of
individual magnetic domains being irrelevant. More pre-
cisely, the simplifying assumptions introduced in phase
theory are the following: (i) the body is of ellipsoidal shape
and the applied field is spatially uniform; (ii) magnetic
domains are fine enough that, on the scale of the specimen
geometry, the materials appears as homogeneous, which,
together with assumption (i), implies that the coarse-grained
magnetization and demagnetizing field are spatially uniform
as well; (iii) the domain structure is such that the formation
of local magnetic charges is completely avoided (principle of
pole avoidance), so that the magnetostatic energy is only
related to magnetic charges at the surface of the body; (iv)
there are no impediments, due for example to structural
disorder, to domain wall motion. Under these conditions,
the behavior of the body is governed only by the anisotropy
energy and the energy of interaction with the applied and
magnetostatic fields. The degree of refinement of the domain
structure becomes irrelevant: the state of the body can be
described just in terms of the relative fractions of the body
volume magnetized along different anisotropy easy axes.
Néel phase approach proves useful in many cases where
the competition between crystal anisotropy and magneto-
static effects dominates the problem. In a recent interesting
work [15] some aspects of phase theory have been applied
to the description of grain-oriented silicon steels magne-
tized along directions different from the rolling direction.
The principles of Néel phase theory have been adapted in
order to take into account the specific role played by Goss
texture and the fact that hysteresis effects cannot be
neglected. On this basis, one is able to work out rather
accurate predictions for magnetization curves, hysteresis
loops and power losses for laminations cut at arbitrary
angles with respect to the rolling direction, once the
magnetic properties along the rolling direction and the
transverse direction are measured.
Another remarkable example of large-scale theory for
soft materials is that due to Van den Berg [16,17], originally
developed for the case where no external field is applied,
and subsequently extended to the case of nonzero field as
well [18]. In Van den Berg approach, one justifies on
physical grounds the fact that if one deals with large and
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
G. Bertotti / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 320 (2008) 2436–2442
ideally soft thin films, the magnetic configurations mini-
mizing the micromagnetic free energy under zero applied
field can be determined by purely geometrical methods by
making the following simplifying assumptions (i): the
magnetization M is uniform across the film thickness and
is in-plane (the component of M normal to the film plane is
zero); (ii) M fulfills the saturation constraint jMj ¼ Ms ; (iii)
the magnetization states are such that no magnetic poles
are created, namely M is divergence-free and tangential at
the body surface; (iv) the other energy contributions
coming from anisotropy and exchange can be completely
ignored. The problem of determining the magnetization
vector field in the body is then solved by the method of
characteristics and translated into graphical rules for the
construction of the admissible magnetization configura-
tions for a film of given geometry. These rules do not lead
to a unique solution, but to families of solutions which are
totally equivalent. As a matter of fact, one expects that this
equivalence should be destroyed once the energy contribu-
tions neglected in the construction (e.g., domain wall
energy, anisotropy energy inside domains) were to be taken
into account.
The geometrical nature of Van den Berg construction
reflects the fact that domain configurations in soft thin
films are the result of topological constraints coming from
the requirement of accommodating a divergence-free
vector field in a given bidimensional region. In particular,
it shows how the divergence-free character of magnetiza-
tion configurations naturally leads to the appearance of
domain walls and domain structures even if exchange and
anisotropy are completely neglected.
The coarse-graining models discussed above led to
important progress in the conceptual understanding of
the equilibrium patterns in large bodies. However, the
connection of these models with the general theory of
micromagnetics is still an open field of investigation. A
thorough study of the connection between micromagnetic
theory and Néel phase theory was carried out by De
Simone [19]. He showed that in the limit where the volume
of the body becomes very large, the limiting behavior of the
magnetic configurations minimizing the micromagnetic
free energy (1) is represented by the configurations
minimizing the modified energy functional:
Z h i of multiscale approaches. Algebraic multigrid methods
m
G L ðMð:Þ; Ha Þ ¼ fðMÞ  0 M  HM  m0 M  Ha dV ,
O 2
(6)
under the relaxed constraint MðrÞjpMs . The function
fðMÞ represents the so-called convex envelope of the
function f AN ðMÞ in Eq. (1). This transformation (convex
envelope) is the vector equivalent of the well-known
Maxwell construction used in the theory of phase coex-
istence and is the appropriate construction for the
description of the coexistence of different magnetic phases
in the body. Indeed, the appearance of fðMÞ and of the
relaxed constraint MðrÞjpMs reflect the fact that in the
large-body limit one accepts configurations consisting of
2439
fine mixtures of domains along different directions, whose
details are not resolved but expressed in terms of a coarse-
grained net magnetization averaged over elementary
volumes containing many domains.. One can prove that
in the case of an ellipsoidal body subject to a uniform
applied field the theory described by Eq. (6) is equivalent to
Néel phase theory.
Considerable mathematical work has also been devoted
to the study of the connection between the behavior of
magnetically soft thin-film and micromagnetics [13,20]. In
this case too, one can define a suitable limiting procedure
when one of the dimensions of the body (the film thickness)
tends to zero. By examining the scaling behavior of the
various micromagnetic energy terms in this limit, it is
possible to derive a coarse-grained energy functional for
the thin-film, which should be the basis for the rigorous
justification of the validity of Van den Berg-type theories.
An open issue in this respect is the fact that in the coarse-
graining approach there appears the relaxed micromagnetic
constraint jMðrÞjpMs and not the full constraint jMðrÞj ¼
Ms used in Van den Berg construction.
The asymptotic models discussed above have been
developed so far for single crystals under idealized
conditions. It is foreseeable that they could be used as
the basis for generalized formulations, valid for polycrys-
tals in the presence of significant structural disorder. Two
lines of development seem to be of interest. On the one
hand, asymptotic approaches could be applied in space-
dependent form, inside each individual crystal grain. On
the other hand, the fact that the coarse-grained magnetiza-
tion actually describes a distribution of magnetic domains
implies the presence in the coarse-grained energy functional
of additional energy terms, neglected in idealized models.
In particular, one expects a term describing the energy of
the magnetic domain wall surface associated with a given
configuration, and a random energy term associated with
pinning of domain walls with structural disorder. These
terms will be functions of the coarse-grained magnetization
vector, with parameters dependent on the micromagnetic
details of the underlying domain distribution, details not
directly resolved by the asymptotic description.
The application of multiscale methods to micromag-
netics is part of the general progress under way in the field
have been applied in their adaptive form to large sparse
matrix equations arising in the finite-element description of
stray fields in micromagnetic problems with nonuniform or
unstructured grids [21]. Systematic upscaling has been
applied to studies of Maxwell equations within hetero-
geneous magnetic materials [22,23]. Methods based on
homogenisation theory [24] have been proposed in relation
to the minimization of the micromagnetic energy func-
tional [25]. Of particular interest are the multiscale-finite-
element method [26] and the heterogeneous-multiscale
method [27], which propose computational-cost-efficient
ways to include the effect of microscale structures in the
coarse-grained finite-element description.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
2440 G. Bertotti / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 320 (2008) 2436–2442
3. Magnetic hysteresis
The most evident macroscopic result of micromagnetic
mechanisms is the appearance of hysteresis phenomena of
complex nature. Various models have been proposed for
the description of these phenomena: Preisach-type models
[3,28], Jiles–Atherton-type models [29,30], and various
attempts at vector hysteresis modeling [31]. These models
have distinct interesting features but a common short-
coming: they are based on ad hoc assumptions, phenom-
enological in nature, for which no clear justification is
given in terms of micromagnetic mechanisms. Vector
hysteresis models attempt various strategies aimed at
capturing the basic consequences that a certain vector field
history will have on the material response. Jiles–Atherton-
type models identify the main factor of interest in the
competition between the natural tendency of the material
to evolve toward minimum energy states (the anhysteretic
curve) and the hindering effect of structural disorder which
opposes this tendency. Finally, in Preisach-type models,
structural disorder results in a statistical distribution of
elementary magnetization reversal events, under the
assumption that interaction effects, and first of all
magnetostatic interactions, can be expressed in frozen,
state-independent form.
The Preisach approach has been often used in the past as
a tool to classify and compare materials based on
differences in their Preisach distribution [32–34]. Repre-
senting a material by its Preisach distribution can be useful
in order to give evidence of certain characteristic features
of the hysteretic response. However, this approach suffers
from an inherent shortcoming. It was proven that there
exist two properties, known as the wiping-out or return-
point memory property and the congruency property,
which express the necessary and sufficient conditions for
the representation of a generic scalar hysteretic system by
the Preisach model [28,35]. Soft magnetic materials satisfy
these properties only approximately, sometimes with
significant discrepancies. Therefore, in most cases the
Preisach representation is the result of manipulations of
the experimental data forcing them into the Preisach
framework.
To overcome this difficulty, a more flexible representa-
tion has been proposed, known under the name of FORC
diagrams [36], where FORC stands for first-order reversal
curves. In fact, the set of first-order magnetization reversal
curves is what permits one, through appropriate double
differentiation, to reconstruct the Preisach distribution. If
the same differentiation is carried out without assuming
that the system response is describable by the Preisach
model, one obtains diagrams in which a function analo-
gous to the Preisach distribution is generated without
forcing the symmetries typical of Preisach systems. FORC
representations are being applied to various systems and
materials [37]. Recently, attempts have been made to apply
this method to soft magnetic materials, in order to
show possible similarities between experimental outcomes
and predictions of specific models (e.g., Jiles–Atherton
model) [38].
If one accepts the idea that the phenomenological
hysteresis models previously mentioned can be an effective
way of lumping all the details of underlying micromagnetic
mechanisms into a limited number of parameters, then one
can investigate the dependence of these parameters on
specific microstructural features. A case of particular
importance in this respect is the dependence of macro-
scopic hysteresis on plastic deformation [39]. In recent
papers [40,41], this problem has been addressed in the
frame of Jiles–Atherton-type models. The two model
parameters k and a that control the strength of pinning
effects and the slope of the anhysteretic curve are assumed
to have identical dependence on grain size s and dislocation
pffiffiffiffiffi dependence being of the type: a; k
density zd , this
/ ðG 1 þ G 2 =sÞ zd , where G 1 and G 2 are constant coeffi-
cients. Once the dislocation density is connected to the flow
stress and plastic deformation by appropriate models of
plastic flow, one is capable of predicting how the hysteresis
loop will evolve as a function of plastic strain.
4. Magnetic power losses
A case, of central importance to soft magnetic materials,
where micromagnetics is bypassed by ad hoc simplifying
assumptions is the description of power losses. From the
micromagnetic point of view, the loss problem would
amount to the quite formidable task of solving the
equations for the dynamic evolution of the magnetic
domain structure in a metal (i.e., micromagnetic equations
+ Maxwell equations), by including into the effective field
(Eq. (4)) the magnetic field generated by eddy currents at
each point in the material. It was suggested in the frame of
the so-called statistical loss theory [42] that the loss
behavior is dominated by certain qualitative features of
the magnetization process, first of all the fact that mag-
netization reversal takes place in a strongly correlated
fashion inside correlation regions of dimensions controlled
by the microstructure (e.g., grain size). Once the phenom-
enological assumption of the existence of a certain number
of statistically independent correlation regions is accepted,
the basic aspects of the loss behavior can be understood
and reproduced in a satisfactory way. First of all, the
statistical approach shows that the so-called loss separation
method is not a mere empirical procedure for loss analysis,
but has indeed a precise physical origin. In fact, one can
prove by appropriate statistical methods of the theory of
Markovian stochastic processes [3] that, under rather
broad conditions, the total loss P is the sum of three terms
for which the theory gives definite expressions in terms of
the correlation properties of the magnetization process:
P ¼ Physt þ Pclass þ Pexc . (7)
These terms are the so-called hysteresis ðPhyst Þ, classical
ðPclass Þ, and excess ðPexc Þ components. In particular, one
finds that the expression for Pclass predicted by the
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
G. Bertotti / Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 320 (2008) 2436–2442
statistical approach coincides with the loss that one would
have if no hysteresis and no magnetic domains were
present. The decomposition of the loss into these contribu-
tions reflects the coexistence of three dominant space-time
scales in the magnetization process: fast and localized
elementary Barkhausen jumps giving rise to Physt ; large-
scale eddy current patterns controlled by the system
geometry ðPclass Þ; and intermediate-scale losses consequent
to the existence of the correlation regions mentioned
above. ðPexc Þ. A particularly simple and interesting case is
that of materials with fine domain structures and important
structural disorder (e.g., non-oriented silicon steels). In that
case, the loss per unit volume under sinusoidal flux in a
lamination of thickness d takes the form:
p2 sd 2
P ¼ Physt þ ðI p f Þ2 þ CðI p f Þ3=2 , (8)
6
where f is the magnetization frequency, I p the peak
magnetization, s the electrical conductivity, and C a
material-dependent parameter related to the correlation
region properties. The parameter C turns out to be inti-
mately connected to the hysteresis loss itself, as a con-
sequence of the fact that the distribution of local coercive
fields controlling quasi-static hysteresis also controls the
number of active correlation regions under given excitation
conditions. In addition, comparison with loss measure-
ments shows that C often contains some residual depen-
dence on the peak magnetization I p .
A generalized version of Eq. (8), proposed in Ref. [43],
proves extremely useful in all those cases where the
material response is non-sinusoidal. It is a formula for
the instantaneous loss at time t:
   3=2
sd 2 dI 2 0 dI
PðtÞ ¼ Physt ðtÞ þ þC , (9)
12 dt dt
expressed in terms of the instantaneous magnetization rate
of change dI=dt and a parameter, C 0 , strictly connected to
the parameter C of Eq. (8). The effect of flux distortions on
losses can be estimated quite generally by taking the
average of Eq. (9) over a magnetization cycle.
The loss problem is part of the more general problem of
predicting the shape of the dynamic hysteresis loop
traversed by a soft magnetic specimen under given
excitation conditions. The so-called dynamic Preisach
model [44] was developed for this purpose. Related to this
problem are the attempts made by several authors to
include adequate descriptions of the local hysteretic
response of the material into Maxwell solvers for the study
and design of transformers, electrical machines and various
types of magnetic devices [45]. The dynamic Preisach mode
can be useful in this respect too. More recent developments
along a different line [46] are particularly suited to the
description of electrical steels.
The statistical loss theory was originally developed and
applied with success to silicon steels, nickel–iron materials,
amorphous ribbons. Recently, the same approach has been
extended to Mn–Zn ferrites [47,48]. Although in this case
2441
eddy currents are not the main cause of dissipation, the
description in terms of active correlation regions can still be
applied, while assuming that dissipation is due to spin
relaxation through Landau–Lifshitz dynamics. This leads
to an expression for the loss of the type of Eq. (8), where
the second term, the so-called classical loss, is negligible
under most circumstances, while the excess loss term
consists of two contributions, one due to domain wall
motion and the other to magnetization rotation inside
grains. The domain wall term is of the form:
Pexc / ½ahsiðPhyst Þn I p f 2 1=ðnþ1Þ , (10)
where a is the dimensionless damping constant appearing
in Landau–Lifshitz equation (of the order of some 102 ),
hsi is the average grain size, and n is a material-dependent
exponent, which is found typically to be in the range:
0:5pnp0:8. In this case too, a direct connection between
excess loss and hysteresis loss is found.
A detailed analysis of the residual role played by eddy
currents in soft ferrites can be carried out by appropriate
homogenization techniques [49,50] applied to the hetero-
geneous microstructure of the ferrite core, consisting of
grains and inter-grain layers. This approach permits one, in
particular, to determine the conditions associated with
qualitatively different dynamical regimes, one where closed
eddy current flow patterns are present inside each
individual grain, and the other where eddy currents flow
across inter-grain layers and generate patterns extending
over the entire ferrite core.
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the statistical loss
theory has been recently applied also to systems remark-
ably far from the ones for which the theory was originally
conceived, that is ultra-thin films [51]. For these systems,
there has been some debate in the recent past about the fact
that measured dynamic hysteresis loops were or were not
giving experimental evidence for certain cross-over effects
between expected regimes of dynamical response. In Ref.
[51], it is shown that no ad hoc assumption about the
existence of specific dynamical regimes is needed, because
all the experimental data about losses in ultra-thin films are
consistent with the predictions of the statistical loss theory,
the differences observed for different films being simply due
to differences in the number of active correlation regions.
Acknowledgments
The author is indebted to O. Bottauscio and C. Serpico
for helpful discussions about the use of multiscale
approaches in micromagnetics.
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