470 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 36, NO.

2, MARCH 2000

Energy Calculation of a Permanent Magnet System

by Surface and Flux Integrals (the Flux-mmf Method)
Peter A. Watterson

AbstractFormulas are derived for the total magnetic energy

of a system with no currents, linear soft magnetic materials, and
linear permanent magnets that satisfy a zero curl condition in-
volving their magnetization vector (zero equivalent volume current
density). This class of magnets includes common parallel and ra-
dially magnetized NdFeB and ferrite magnets above the knee in
their demagnetization curves. The formulas express the energy as
a constant plus either an integral over the magnet surface of the
magnetic vector potential or an integral through the magnet of the
magnetic flux. The formulas provide theoretical foundation for the
flux-magnetomotive force (mmf) method for calculating cogging
torque of permanent magnet motors.
Index TermsDemagnetization, permanent magnets, stored en-
ergy, work done.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. B -H diagram for components of B and H parallel to the

I N [1], Lovatt and I advocated the use of the vertically shaded

area depicted in Fig. 1 for the magnetic energy density asso-
ciated with the field components parallel to the magnetization
magnetization direction of a permanent magnet.

direction of a permanent magnet material. In [1, Appendix], we magnet volume for the total system energy. Partition space
noted several authors whom we believed to be recommending into the two types of magnetic material, region of permanent
an energy density given by the sum of the vertically and hori- (or hard) magnet material (subscript ), and region of soft
zontally shaded areas in Fig. 1. One of those authors, Miller [2], magnetic material (subscript ), including linear magnetic ma-
has pointed out to us that although this is not the energy density terial such as air. The regions may be disconnected, e.g., there
of the magnet material alone, when this area is integrated over may be several pieces of magnet material.
the magnet volume it can give the energy of the entire system. At each point in the permanent magnet material, suppose that
A proof by Strahan of this result and when it applies, namely the trajectory in - space can be approximated as following a
zero external currents and linear soft magnetic materials, has ap- single-valued recoil curve, passing through at
peared recently [3], with references to two other works [4]-[5].
This proof is reassembled in Section II, and a simplification for (1)
linear magnets is provided. The theory is then extended in Sec-
tions III and IV for certain types of magnet to give expressions where bold symbols are vectors and square-bracketed symbols
for the system energy in terms of a surface integral and a flux in- are tensors. The flux density intercept is sometimes denoted
tegral, providing theoretical backing to the flux-magnetomotive by , for the residual magnetization [7], but here the
force (mmf) method for cogging torque calculation of perma- introduction of another symbol is avoided. Until indicated
nent magnet motors expounded by Deodhar et al. [6]. In par- otherwise, the recoil curve need not be a line, i.e., the (relative
ticular, it is shown how the flux through the magnet must be differential) permeability tensor can be a function of ,
defined as an integral or average over surfaces perpendicular to and both and may vary with position.
the magnetization direction. The soft magnetic material is also taken as having a single-
valued operating curve, but passing through the origin
II. SYSTEM ENERGY AS AN INTEGRAL OVER MAGNET VOLUME
(2)
This section follows the derivation by Strahan [3], who also
quoted Zijlstra [4] and Brown [5], to obtain an integral over the The system magnetic energy is taken to be defined as

Manuscript received July 7, 1999; revised November 16, 1999. This work
was supported by the Australian Cooperative Research Centre for Renewable
Energy.
The author is with the Faculty of Engineering, University of Technology,
Sydney, NSW 2007 Australia (e-mail: watt@eng.uts.edu.au). (3)
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9464(00)01839-2.

00189464/00$10.00 2000 IEEE

WATTERSON: ENERGY CALCULATION OF A PERMANENT MAGNET SYSTEM 471

where and denote the operating point at any location and to a knee (as depicted in Fig. 1), and if the magnet material has
subscripts and are used to denote dummy integration vari- partially demagnetized and fallen below the knee, then the recoil
ables along the recoil magnetization curves. Some arguments line can also be well approximated as linear. If the operating
for the adoption of as the lower limit of integration are given point has not fallen below the knee, the recoil line is identical
in [1]. Although the limit is arbitrary physically, in that changes to the initial demagnetization line and , the magnet
of energy are unaffected by its value, the adoption of aids remanence.
mathematical simplification below for magnets operating on a Hereafter we restrict our consideration to such linear mag-
linear recoil line, as depicted in Fig. 1. nets, i.e., we assume that is independent of . For this
To proceed, it must be assumed that the soft material is linear, case, it is simple to show (by change of variable to the scalar
i.e., that the permeability matrix is independent of , parameter in and , with
though it may still vary with position (and indeed it will, if there varying from 0 to 1), that
are both air and linear iron parts external to the magnet material).
For this case, it is simple to show (by change of variable to the (11)
scalar parameter in and , with varying
from 0 to 1), that
Substitution of (11) into (10) establishes that if and
is independent of and is independent of , then
(4)
(12)
Next it must be assumed that there are no (free) currents any-
where, i.e., that the current density , and hence that
Note that only the component of parallel to contributes
(5) to the integral.

This and Gauss's Law III. SYSTEM ENERGY AS AN INTEGRAL OVER THE MAGNET
SURFACE
(6)
Restricting consideration to linear magnet and linear soft ma-
or equivalently the existence of the magnetic vector potential terials, this section derives a reduction of the system energy
in volume integral (12) to a surface integral for certain types of
magnet material. Introduce the magnet reluctivity tensor, the in-
(7)
verse of the permeability tensor
are sufficient conditions (providing also that and decay
(13)
sufficiently fast at infinity) for the result proven in Brown [5]
and also proven, by alternative means, in the Appendix of this so that (1) is equivalent to
paper
(14)
(8)
Substitution of (14) at into (12) gives
Since is the sum of and regions, (8) implies (15)
(9) where

By substitution of (4) then (9) into (3), the integral over the (16)
soft magnetic material is eliminated, reproducing the expression
given by Strahan [3] for the total system energy as an integral and
over the magnet material alone: if and is independent
of , then (17)

(10) For given magnet material, is a constant that may be ignored

The contributions to from the components parallel to the
magnetization direction (assuming is symmetric, as de-
scribed in Section V) are depicted in Fig. 1; the integrand of the
first volume integral on the right-hand side of (10) is the ver-
tically shaded area, while the integrand of the second volume
integral (including its sign) is the horizontally shaded area.
For many common magnets, including rare-earth and ferrite
magnets, the demagnetization curve can be taken as linear down
if force or torque is to be calculated from variations in .
In order to transfer the tensor operation of from to
in (16), introduce
(18)
where superscript denotes transpose. Note that if is sym-
metric, then the projection of the recoil line beyond the ini-
tial demagnetization curve (if crossed) intercepts at
, as depicted in Fig. 1 (the intercept being labelled as
472 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 36, NO. 2, MARCH 2000

for , the positive amplitude of ). Then (16) is equiv- where is an area element on the constant surface. Substi-
alent to tuting (24)(26) into (19) gives in terms of an integral of
flux

(27)

(28)
(19)

by a vector identity. where the component is the component normal to the surface
Suppose the magnet material is such that is an irrotational in the direction of increasing , and is the flux over each
field, i.e. constant surface. If there are several magnets, then the
for each must be added to give the total .
(20) Hereafter, it will be assumed that for each magnet the per-
meability tensor is a symmetric tensor, with the magneti-
Then, via the divergence theorem zation direction as one eigenvector. In an orthogonal coor-
dinate system formed by the eigenvectors, the tensor has
(21) diagonal matrix form [8]. The eigenvalue associated with
will be denoted . Usually the magnetic properties in the
expressing as a surface integral over the magnet material. quadrature directions perpendicular to are axisymmetric
For two-dimensional (2-D) problems with and confined around , for which case denote as the perpendicular
to the - plane and independent of eigenvalue. Typically the inferred from magnet data sheets
for ferrite and NdFeB magnets is . Values of are
(22) not published but is quoted for ferrites in [9]. If the
preferred direction is the -axis, then in matrix form
and (21) simplifies to the following line integral around the
magnet material (the sum of the integrals around each magnet
if there are several) and

(23)

where is the -direction depth and the line integral is per-

(29)
formed with the magnet material on the left for out of the page.

IV. SYSTEM ENERGY AS AN INTEGRAL OF MAGNET FLUX

Another expression for is now derived for the case of For such magnets with symmetric , (18) becomes
linear soft materials and linear magnets satisfying (20), which
is equivalent to the existence of a scalar potential with
(30)
(24)
and the component in (27) is identical to the component of
The negative sign is inserted so that is in the direction of
in the magnetization direction. The constant part of given
for symmetric . This has dimension Ampere and can
by (17) becomes
be regarded as the mmf associated with the effective coercivity
of the magnet (effective coercivity because it is that related to
the linear extension of the recoil-line if the recoil line intercepts (31)
the initial demagnetization curve above the -axis).
Regard as a curvilinear coordinate, and suppose that for
a given magnet the minimum is and the maximum is V. PARALLEL AND RADIAL MAGNETS
. Consider the volume integral (19) carried out in layers,
generically from the surface constant to the surface . The two most commercially significant magnetization forms,
The distance between these surfaces at any point is given by depicted in Fig. 2, are:
1) parallel magnetization, in which the Cartesian axes can be
(25) rotated until one coordinate, call it , is aligned with ;
2) cylindrically radial magnetization, in which there is a
and the volume element can be written cylindrical coordinate system local to the magnet, with
parallel to the unit radial vector ; in this case, denote
(26) if is outwards, or if is inwards.
WATTERSON: ENERGY CALCULATION OF A PERMANENT MAGNET SYSTEM 473

In either case

(32)

where is the (positive) amplitude of and is the unit

coordinate vector.
The conditions on for these two types of magnet to satisfy
the requirements of (24) for simplification of the energy integral
are easily determined. The component of (24) is

(33)

and the other two components of (24) demand that and hence
must depend only on . In summary, for parallel and radial
magnets, the condition for the simplification of the energy in- (a)
tegral is that is a function of only , the coordinate aligned
with the magnetization. The most common case is for both
and to be uniform, in which case is uniform, which is a
constant function of , and so the energy simplification holds
for such magnets.
The above requirement of being a function of also holds
for spherically radial magnets in which there is a spherical co-
ordinate system local to the magnet, with parallel to the unit
radial vector and if is outwards, or if is
inwards. For some dye-pressed magnets magnetically aligned
by a coil fitting closely around the magnet, spherically radial
magnetization may be a better approximation than cylindrically
radial magnetization, but hereafter radial magnetization will be
assumed to be cylindrical.
Assuming is a function of , changing integration variable (b)
in (28) to gives an alternate form
Fig. 2. Depicting the p coordinate for (a) parallel magnets and (b) cylindrically
radial magnets, along with the line element dl in (23) for 2-D problems.
(34)

Since the flux will usually be positive, will usually be

negative.
If is constant it can be taken out of the integral (34), which
can then be written in terms of the average flux through the
magnet (though this simply defines the average) as

(35)
where
(36)
and
(37)
For the two simplest magnet shapes of a rectangular par-
allel magnet and an annular arc radial magnet, as depicted in
Fig. 3, is the magnet side length (measured radially for an
arc magnet). For such magnets, flux leakage across the magnet
side is often small, and if that is the case, then can be esti-
mated from on any surface in the magnet (the midlayer would
be precise if the variation happened to be linear). However,
for analysis of cogging torque, when leakage across the magnet
Fig. 3. (a) Rectangular parallel magnet and (b) annular arc radial magnet,
showing magnet length l .
side can be significant as a magnet approaches a stator tooth, the
true integral should be taken.
For the two simple magnet shapes of Fig. 3, the flux-MMF
method described in [6] can be shown to be identical with the
above if flux leakage through the magnet sides is neglected. The
system energy obtained from their Fig. 3 as the area of the tri-
angle formed by the origin, the operating point and the intercept
on the flux axis at is
(38)
The first term corresponds to of (35), except for the lack of
averaging of the flux (they used the flux through the magnet
outer surface). The second term corresponds to of (31),
474 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 36, NO. 2, MARCH 2000

providing that for a radial arc magnet is taken as the area

half-way up the magnet (though this is immaterial, as this con-
stant term does not effect torque).
For parallel magnetization within an annular arc shape as de-
picted in Fig. 4, flux averaging (or integration of around the
entire magnet surface for the 2-D case) is needed, whereas De-
odhar et al. [6] again used the flux through the outer surface.

VI. CONCLUSION
Exact formulas have been derived for the total energy of a
system involving permanent magnets acting on linear recoil
lines, linear soft magnetic materials, and no currents. The
energy is expressed in (12) as an integral over the magnet
volume alone and divided into a part varying with magnet
position and a constant part in (15)(17). For a certain
class of magnets, namely those for which [defined by (18)
or (30) for symmetric permeability tensors] is an irrotational
field, satisfying (20), the varying part of the energy has
been transformed to an integral over the magnet surface of the
magnetic vector potential (21). For 2-D problems, this formula
reduces to the line integral (23), which offers a simple method
of energy calculation for numerical finite element solutions.
For the simple magnet shapes depicted in Fig. 3, this line
integral need only be performed on the magnet sides (parallel
to the magnetization).
Again for magnets for which is an irrotational field, sat-
isfying (24), is expressed in (28) as an integral through the
magnet of flux times (differential) mmf. For parallel and ra-
dial magnets, the flux is calculated on surfaces perpendicular to
the magnetization direction and the integration variable can be
changed to , distance along the magnetization direction, giving
(34). This formula has the form of an integral of flux linking cur-
rent loops, with the current for the infinitesimal layer thickness
equaling . If is the normal to the magnet surface at a
point, the surface current density can be quoted as
(39)
choosing the sign which would give positive linkage with .
These results are consistent with the commonly used model
for a permanent magnet with no equivalent volume current den-
sity, corresponding to (20). Such a magnet can be modeled as a
linear soft material of permeability surrounded by a sur-
face current density (39) (see, e.g., [10] and [11]). It is noted that
Strahan [3] quoted Stratton [7] as recommending a surface cur-
rent density , differing from (39) by factor . How-
ever, Stratton had made assumptions that effectively set
(he assumed induced magnetization negligible to residual
magnetization).
One application of the formulas presented is to calculation of
the cogging torque for permanent magnet motors, via
(40)
as expounded in the flux-MMF method by Deodhar et al. [6].
The above formulas have clarified how the flux needs to be de-
fined, as an integral or average through each magnet. It must be
Fig. 4. Parallel magnetization of an annular arc shape.
stated, however, that the original complete volume integral of
energy density (3) is also simple to code and takes negligible
computing time compared to the finite element solution itself.
This volume integral also applies when currents are present or
when the soft materials are nonlinear.
APPENDIX
PROOF OF (8)
An alternative proof to that by Brown [5] of (8) given (5) and
(7) is now provided. First, ignore any discontinuities in space.
Then using a vector identity, the divergence theorem and (5)
(41)
if the surface is taken to infinity and and decay suffi-
ciently fast, which is the case for a physical system of currents
or magnets within finite extent, in which decays as (see,
e.g., [12]).
When there are discontinuity surfaces between materials, the
volume integrals must be performed for each material type and
then the surface integrals in (41) must be added. By continuity
across the surface of the tangential components of both (given
no currents) and (given no surface fluxes), the normal com-
ponent of is continuous across the surface and so, since
reverses in sign, the contributions from the two sides of the
discontinuity surface vanish. This completes the proof.
An alternative, less precise derivation simply integrates
throughout any closed flux tube. By Gauss's Law (6), the cross-
sectional area of the tube is inversely proportional to , and
so the product is constant around the tube and can be
evaluated at any point on it, subscript 1, giving
by Stoke's Theorem and (5).
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The author thanks H. C. Lovatt of CSIRO Telecommuni-
cations and Industrial Physics for discussions throughout this
work and also V. S. Ramsden of the University of Technology,
WATTERSON: ENERGY CALCULATION OF A PERMANENT MAGNET SYSTEM
Sydney, Australia, and R. J. Strahan for comments on a draft
of this paper.
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Peter A. Watterson was born in Canberra, Australia, in 1960. He received the
B.Sc. degree (Honors), with applied mathematics emphasis, from Monash Uni-
versity, Melbourne, Australia, in 1980 and the Ph.D. degree in magnetohydro-
dynamics from Cambridge University, Cambridge, U.K., in 1985.
He spent the next five years at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology
Organisation modeling the Rotamak plasma containment device. In 1990 he
switched fields from plasma physics to electrical engineering, joining the Uni-
versity of Technology, Sydney, Australia, where his research is primarily on
motor design.