An effective reluctivity model for nonlinear and anisotropic materials in time-harmonic finite element computations

In time-harmonic finite element analysis, the nonlinear behavior of soft-magnetic materials is often modeled by effective reluctivity curves, to account for the time-dependence of the reluctivity during one cycle of the applied sinusoidal signal. In this paper, the effective reluctivity concept is generalized in such a way, that nonlinear and anisotropic materials can be modeled as well. The model is used to simulate the flux line distribution and the loss distribution in a three-phase transformer under no-load operation.