A methodology for the determination of global electromechanical quantities from a finite element analysis and its application to the evaluation of magnetic forces, torques and stiffness

The paper will present two general methods for the deduction of global information from the final result of the finite element computation of an electromagnetic device. The first one, called the local jacobian derivative, may be used for evaluation of the derivative of any integral quantity versus the parameter of motion of a rigid body. Typically, this method when applied to electromagnetic systems, can be used for the computation of magnetic force or torque by virtual-work principle. Compared with the popular Maxwell´s tensor method, this procedure is easier to implement in a finite element package especially for 3D problems. The second method which is based on a stationary property of the field solution, allows the evaluation of a second order derivative of any integral quantity. For instance, computation of the stiffness of a magnetic system (derivative of a force or a torque) may be achieved as the second order derivative of the magnetic energy. It may be pointed out that this method requires the field computation once for a linear problem as well as for a non-linear one.