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An Eddy-Current Model Describing the Frequency Dependence of the

Coercivity of Polycrystalline Galfenol

Article · November 2012

DOI: 10.1109/TMAG.2012.2202097

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3076 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

An Eddy-Current Model Describing the Frequency Dependence of the

Coercivity of Polycrystalline Galfenol
R. Grössinger, Nasir Mehboob, D. Suess, R. Sato Turtelli, and M. Kriegisch
Institute of Solid State Physics, Technical University of Vienna, Vienna A-1040, Austria

Fe Ga is a high magnetostrictive material which exhibits soft magnetic behavior. The hysteresis loops of different heat treated
Fe Ga ring-shaped samples were measured as a function of the frequency. The frequency dependence of the coercivity was ana-
lyzed using different eddy-current-based models. The obtained results need either an unrealistic high permeability in order to describe
the experimental or a hypothetically oversized sample cross section. This shows that classical eddy currents are not sufficient to
describe . The effect of anomalous eddy currents is more important for this material. A similar result is obtained analyzing the
frequency dependence of the losses.
Index Terms—Coercivity model, eddy current, losses, soft magnetic.

I. INTRODUCTION

S
(Fe
OFT magnetic materials with high magnetostriction are of
great technical importance. The smart material Galfenol
Ga , where ) is one industrially in-
teresting example. Substituting Fe by non magnetic Ga or Al
causes a dramatic increase in magnetostriction [1]. The high
magnetostriction is due to local structure (ordering of Ga pairs
[2]) and also due to softening of the elastic constants [3]. For
dynamic applications we studied in this work the frequency de-
pendence of the hysteresis loop and analyzed these data using
different assumptions of eddy-current-based models. Fig. 1. Hysteresis loop measured at different frequencies: (a) on quenched (Q)
and (b) on annealed (A) Fe Ga at room temperature. The arrows indicate
B(H) with increasing frequency.
II. EXPERIMENTAL

The method of producing single phase, polycrystalline

Fe Ga is described elsewhere [1], [4]. At this composi-
tion a maximum in the magnetostriction was found [1]. Two
ring-shaped samples were sealed in a quartz ampoule under
150 mbar Argon atmospheres with Tantal foil as oxygen getter
material. For both samples the same heat treatment was applied
( C for 100 h), but with one difference: one sample
was quenched in cold water (“Q” or “Quenched”), while the
other was slowly cooled in the oven (“A” or “Annealed Slowly
Cooled”). The different heat treatment causes large variations
in the magnetostriction as well as in the stress state of the
material [4]. Fig. 2. Coercivity versus the frequency on quenched and annealed Fe Ga ,
The magnetization was measured using a fully automated at room temperature. The dotted lines indicate the fit according to (1) (2).
hysteresograph suited for ring-shaped samples [5]. Ring-shaped
samples were chosen for avoiding demagnetizing effects. The
frequency was varied between 0.25 and 200 Hz in order to study III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
the influence of eddy currents. The shape of was chosen
triangular in order to obtain a constant for estimating the Results of detailed structural, magnetic, and magnetostrictive
permeability as well as the losses. investigations will be published elsewhere [4]. Fig. 1(a) and (b)
show the frequency dependence of the hysteresis loops mea-
sured at room temperature on “Q” and “A” Fe Ga , respec-
Manuscript received March 01, 2012; revised May 04, 2012; accepted May tively. The effect of eddy currents is obvious regarding the in-
18, 2012. Date of current version October 19, 2012. Corresponding author: crease of the coercivity (and remanence) with frequency.
R. Grössinger (e-mail: rgroess@ifp.tuwien.ac.at).
In Fig. 2 the coercivity is plotted as a function of the fre-
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. quency. The plots are obviously not linear, indicating the im-
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2012.2202097 portance of frequency dependent effects.

0018-9464/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE

GRÖSSINGER et al.: EDDY-CURRENT MODEL DESCRIBING THE FREQUENCY DEPENDENCE
TABLE I
ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO (1) WHERE AND DESCRIBE THE
ERRORS OF AND , RESPECTIVELY
TABLE II
ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO (2) WHERE AND DESCRIBE THE
ERRORS OF AND , RESPECTIVELY
IV. ANALYSIS
There are several possibilities to analyze the frequency de-
pendence of : one can assume that scales with some un-
known power of “ ” which leads to (1) or one assumes that
one can develop into different powers of [see (2)]
(1)
(2)
where coefficients and correspond to the zero frequency co-
ercivity. These values are extrapolated from low frequency data,
they are not considered for the fit. The coefficients and de-
scribe the normal eddy and anomalous eddy currents, respec-
tively. The coefficient and the power factor deliver an av-
erage of normal and anomalous eddy currents.
Table I shows the results of fitting the experimental data by
(1) and Table II by (2).
The sample “A” shows significant lower values for
that may be due to the stress relaxed state in this sample which
was found also by XRD [4]. The dynamic coefficients ( and )
are in both models much larger for the sample “Q”. The power
factor “ ” of (1) is less than one. According to an analysis of the
frequency behavior of the coercivity in amorphous materials,
the power factor can be described by a general formula which
was derived for triangular wave form of the field with
[6]
(3)
where is the field amplitude and can vary between 1 and
3 depending on the geometry and on the microstructure of the
material as well as on the frequency range considered. Formula
(3) is equivalent to (1) with the parameter corresponding to
which correlates to the dynamic coercivity field. Ac-
cording to [6] the power factor “ ” close to 2/3 (see Table I)
corresponds to a high frequency solution or to the fact that also
anomalous eddy current damping of the domain walls occur.
From the parameters of (2) given in Table II one can see that
here normal eddy currents are visible described by parameter
“ ” however the anomalous eddy current damping (“ ”) be-
comes especially at higher frequencies dominant. Generally the
“Q” sample shows higher normal eddy-current effects.
3077
A. Eddy-Current Model for Constant
We showed in a previous paper [7] that the frequency depen-
dence of can be also analyzed assuming a classical eddy-cur-
rent model based on the material parameters. In the following
we assume a cylindrical sample with radius . An external field
which is applied parallel to the symmetry axis decreases
within the magnetic cylinder at position due to eddy currents
as
(4)
The parameters in this formula are: —relative permeability,
—specific electrical resistivity and -the radius of sample. Co-
ercivity is reached if the outer shell of the cylinder is switched
and the volume of the outer shell is the same as the inner core.
Due to eddy currents we expect the outer core to switch first
since the field decays according to (4) towards the center. We
assume that the radius of the inner core is and the thickness
of the outer shell is . The volume of the inner core is equal to
the outer shell if . Hence
(5)
The condition for the applied filed in order to reduce the
magnetization to zero is given by
(6)
where is the coercive field in the limit of . Hence
is equal to the frequency dependent coercive field
(7)
Using (7) assuming that the specific resistivity (for Fe-Ga
is about m—see [4]) is (nearly) independent of
the heat treatment, the maximum average permeability was
estimated from the frequency dependence of . Values of
160 000 (sample Q) and 880 000 (sample A) were calculated.
These values are unrealistic large for a high magnetostrictive
material. The experimental values of determined from
the slope of the hysteresis loop ( 0.25 Hz), which are
(sample Q) and (sample A) gave
more realistic numbers.
If one can compares the frequency dependence as described
by (7) with the experimentally determined versus (see
Fig. 2) it becomes evident that assuming increases with
fails, whereas the experimental curve starts to saturate
for high frequency values.
Regarding this unrealistic behavior of our model describing
and taking also into consideration that the permeability
values obtained from this model are unreasonable high an im-
provement is needed.
3078 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2012

TABLE III
COEFFICIENT “ ” AND HIS ERROR AS WELL AS THE PERMEABILITY
AT CALCULATED FROM ASSUMING

TABLE IV
COEFFICIENT “ ” AND HIS ERROR AS WELL AS THE PERMEABILITY
AT CALCULATED FROM
USING AS A FREE FIT PARAMETER
Fig. 3. Plot of the coercivity versus the frequency on annealed and quenched
Fe Ga at room temperature—the dotted lines indicate the dynamic hys-
teresis based model according to (11) and (12).

the cylinder can be given similar as in (4) as a function of the

B. Eddy-Current Model for frequency as

Generally it can be assumed that the permeability scales re- (9)

ciprocal with the coercivity [8]. Therefore an increasing coer-
civity due to an increase of the frequency may cause a reciprocal where is the classical skin depth. Now, we have to assume
decreasing permeability. This leads to an improved eddy-cur- that is a function of the field as it can be obtained from quasi-
rent model which assumes that can be described by the static measurements. As a consequence of the skin depth, also
simple formula: . Applying now this model becomes a function of the local field. We now introduce finite
on the experimental curve delivers the correct shape of . thickness shells with thickness in the cylinder.
Here, we expressed (8) in term of since with the We denote as the skin depth in the first shell, as the skin
problem is analytically difficult to solve. The results of fitting depth in the second shell, and so on
(8) to the experimental data by assuming , where is the
free parameter, are given in Table III
(10)
(8)
(11)

However the values as obtained for are for a poly-

crystalline material with high magnetostriction still unrealistic
large.
This means that the assumption of with
is not sufficient to describe with realistic values
of the permeability. Therefore in order to study the effect of this
reciprocity more general we also used as a free fit parameter.
This delivers fit results which agree again very well with the ex-
perimental behavior of . The results of the fit are given in
Table IV. Note that the error in “ ” is now significantly bigger,
which is a hint that this model is also problematic.
It is obvious that the here obtained values for the power factor
are close to one and consequently the calculated relative per-
meability is similar to that given in Table III. This means that
also this assumption can not solve the problem of the too high
permeability value.
C. Eddy-Current Model for General Nonlinear
In the following model we assumed that due to the non linear
behavior of the permeability becomes also a function
of the space due to the fact the field is not constant within the
sample, which is caused by eddy currents.
Again a cylindrical ring shaped sample is used which has the
radius R and at zero frequency a coercivity . The field
as function of the distance of surface of
The local coercivity is reached if the outer shell of the cylinder
is switched and the volume of the outer shell is the same as the
inner core as we already did to derive (5) and (6), which leads
to
(12)
Equation (12) is solved by using (11) numerically applying a
Newton-method. The results obtained for the two Fe Ga
samples are shown in Fig. 3.
For these curves, the used data are: [ m]
and the permeability is directly calculated from the hysteresis
measured at the lowest frequency. However in order to obtain
qualitative agreement we have to assume a hypothetic radius of
the sample of 43 mm which is a factor 30–40 larger than the
correct value. Therefore also this model which is based only on
classical eddy currents is not able to describe correct.
D. Eddy-Current Model Including Losses
The hysteresis loops measured at different frequencies [see
Fig. 1(a) and (b)] were integrated and these data can be used to
estimate the frequency dependence of the losses—as given in
Fig. 4. Note that the here estimated losses are a factor 25 higher
than that of a conventional Fe-Si steel which might be due to
the much larger magnetostriction of Fe-Ga.
GRÖSSINGER et al.: EDDY-CURRENT MODEL DESCRIBING THE FREQUENCY DEPENDENCE 3079

forms a characteristic field responsible for the anomalous

eddy currents. The estimated values of which are unreason-
able high for a soft magnetic material like, e.g., Fe-Si are given
in Table V.

V. SUMMARY
The frequency dependence of the hysteresis (coercivity) as
well as the losses was measured on polycrystalline Fe Ga
after two different heat treatments. The data were analyzed
using different models which are based on the assumption of
eddy currents. They can be analyzed using similar models as for
Fe-Si. The annealed sample exhibits lower coercivity and lower
hysteresis losses however a stronger frequency dependence.
Analyzing the frequency dependence of the coercivity the
Fig. 4. Dependence of the integrated area of the hysteresis loops mea- unknown permeability can be estimated. However in order to
sured at different frequencies as function of the frequency. The dotted lines in-
dicate the fit according to (14). agree with the experimental data unrealistic high values of the
permeability have to be assumed. A dynamic hysteresis based
model can explain the experimental data only by assuming a
TABLE V much larger sample cross section as really used. The results of
HYSTERESIS LOOSES, COEFFICIENT OF CLASSICAL EDDY-CURRENT
LOSSES, COEFFICIENT OF EXCESS EDDY-CURRENT LOSSES, AND this analysis show however that in all cases anomalous eddy
ARE ESTIMATED ERRORS. (13) COEFFICIENT OF CLASSICAL current effects are necessary in order to achieve agreement
EDDY CURRENT LOSSES CALCULATED ACCORDING TO (13) USING between experiment and model. Analyzing the frequency
T AND M; IS THE WAVE FORM
FACTOR. CALCULATED ACCORDING TO (15) dependence of the losses allows a separation between classical
and excess eddy-current losses. The classical losses (B ) can
also be calculated using the material parameters. Here good
agreement between the fitted and the calculated values were
found. The excess eddy-current losses (B ) are rather high
and deliver unexpected large values for the characteristic field
V which might be due to the high magnetostriction of this
material. No direct correlation could be found between the
parameters describing frequency dependence of the coercivity
These curves were analyzed using (13), a model suggested and that of the losses.
for Fe-Si by Moses et al. [9]
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
(13) This work was supported by Austrian FWF under Grant
S10406-N16.
where represents here the frequency independent hysteresis
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