It can be tough to find detailed information about electromagnetic simulations online – at least as things stand in the present internet. Where information is present it is provided in some standard form as outlined by textbooks and it is not always immediately apparent how this textbook knowledge can be translated into implementations. In this article, I build a very simple and maybe inaccurate PID control system that very superficially pretends to run on a microcontroller. To support this, since I don’t have a real system to test on, I outline a very quick and dirty approach to modeling electromagnetic levitation of a set of coils above a track using python and a recently developed package: Magpylib.
Category: Physics & Mathematics
Magnetic Properties of Materials
Designing electric machines sometimes requires an understanding of the physical properties of the materials we’re working with. In this article, I’ll be exploring the magnetic properties of materials. I’m particularly interested in a diamagnetic material called pyrolytic graphite – the strongest room temperature diamagnet in existence today. My goal is to understand how magnetic and diamagnetic materials interacts with an externally applied magnetic field.
Who the Devil is Maxwell?
Maxwell? Who is he? Why should we even care who he is? And ohhh … god! What is the insanity behind his equations?! … these my friends are the questions that run chills down the spines of us normal folks. We are like fish out of water, thrashing about in an insane desperate struggle to comprehend the great questions of the universe. Well, lets try diving back into the ocean … and gaze upon the incredible deliciousness of physics at work.
Magnetic Levitation, Potential Energy and Earnshaw’s Theorem
Earnshaw’s theorem demonstrates that stable levitation isn’t possible using static magnetic or electric fields. His proof relies on the idea that the potential energy surface at all points in space in any static system has no local minima. In this article, I’ll discuss potential energy and its relationship to Earnshaw’s theorem and verify that the theorem is, in-fact, correct.
The Newton-Raphson Method
In the world of electrical machines, we stuffy engineers like to wax intellectual and spout all sorts of age old wisdom from all sorts of dusty old books. Today I’m going to dust off some books and talk about the Newton-Raphson Numerical Method for estimating equation roots. This is a key method that many Finite Element Analysis (FEA) tools use to calculate magnetic fields. The truth is, as engineers, we use FEA all the time, but very few of us really understand the theory or how it all works. This is my first attempt to remedy that particular situation. But be patient! I’m only a beginner too! 🙂
We’re Engineers DAMN IT!
A few years ago, when I was but a weee little lad, ready to face the world and enter the world of engineering, I got the rummy idea that university was the way to go. And so, full of optimism and passion, I popped in the application form, went through the ‘do you have the highest grade’ rat race, got out a substantial loan and made my way into the University (the University in question shall remain unnamed). I was excited! Thrilled! I was in the exciting and riveting field of the then massively popular and over inflated subject of … computer engineering … yes, you heard it right computer engineering … yes yes .. I know, you’re probably asking: “What were you THINKING?!” … hey, didn’t I mention that I was just a weee little lad? … me liked computer games.