Macroscopic Modeling of Magnetic Microwires for Finite Element Simulations of Inductive Components

New compound magnetic material based on parallel continuous ferromagnetic microwires (e.g., based on cobalt) embedded in a body made of polymeric material can potentially offer significant mechanical advantages over well-known fragile ferrite in some applications where the magnetic material has to withstand mechanical vibrations. The diameter of the magnetic microwires is minimal (3-60 μm) compared to the rest of the dimensions (80-300 mm) and the number of microwires is in the order of 1000 s. It requires extremely fine meshes, then brute force simulation by the finite element method is not possible. In this article, a method to overcome this limitation is proposed, which is based on the substitution of the original material by a homogenous material that behaves, in a macroscopic sense, as the compound material. The physical properties of the homogeneous material are obtained in different spatial directions, due to the inherent anisotropy of the compounded magnetic component, through analytical equations.