An Equivalent Surface Source Method for Computation of the Magnetic Field Reduction of Metal Shields

A numerical method for computation of the resultant quasi-static magnetic field in the vicinity of parallel wires and metal shields is presented. The primary magnetic field source is time-harmonic currents in wires. This field is modified by conducting magnetic and/or nonmagnetic shields. The material is assumed to be linear under the applied source field. The shielding effectiveness can be estimated by a comparison between the primary and the resultant field. The reaction magnetic field is expressed by a sum of fields caused by equivalent single- and double-layer sources distributed on the shield surface. Integral equations for unknown distributions of these equivalent sources are derived from the Green´s second identity implemented inside and outside the shields. These equations are coupled integral equations, and are solved by the moment method. Numerical results of the resultant (shielded) magnetic field obtained with the proposed method are compared with the results of: 1) analytically solvable problems; 2) measurements; and 3) two different numerical methods.