Simulation of an electromagnetic food inspection sensor using the FEM method

We aim to develop an electromagnetic imaging-based sensor for the detection of foreign objects in aqueous food media. This is an important problem in food processing, especially in the dairy processing industry. Our sensor is based on the assumption that aqueous food typically has an electrical conductivity lower than that of the conductors and higher than that of the insulators that typically contaminate it. By controlling the electrical excitation through the sensing area, we measure the disturbances to the electromagnetic field caused by the foreign objects. In this paper we describe the process that we used to simulate the sensor and excitation system. The electromagnetic simulation of the excitation and sensor readings under various conditions was simulated using the FEniCSx computing platform, a collection of software libraries for solving partial differential equations (PDEs) using the finite element method. The results of our simulations show close agreement with our expected measurements from the prototype device.