Magnetic shielding

Magnetic shielding was an issue for MECAL to design a very accurate actuator to stabilise a frame to be used in the chip industry. Magnetic shielding is important, because it can interfere with sensitive electronics elsewhere in the product and cause unexpected behaviour. Multiphysics Finite Element Method simulations can trace the important parts in the device that are a source of magnetic fields such as coils or permanent strong magnets. The interest of MECAL was the magnetic shielding at the lower part of the frequency spectrum, typically from stationary to several kHz.

 

FEM simulation actuator

The current design of MECAL was implemented in the Finite Element Method (FEM) model. The simulations were then setup with stationary fields. Material parameters from the supplier were used, and the appropriate saturation was taken into account as a non-linear effect. The technical staff of MECAL was able to indicate already some important areas for shielding, but the complete effect was made clear by means of the FEM simulations. After running some scenarios Physixfactor came up with an ideal solution for this case.

Results of low frequency shielding

The shielding material could be applied effectively given the specifications of MECAL. As a side result the costs of the applied material could be reduced. The effects of low frequency behaviour became clear and finally a design could be proposed. By using the Finite Element Method analysis an optimum performance could be achieved.