Comparison of soft magnetic composites (SMCs) and electrical steel

Abstract

This paper deals with a comparison of soft magnetic composites (SMCs) and electrical steel. At first the theory and practice of measuring of the magnetic properties with the ring core method are described. Next a comparison between electrical steel and SMC regarding different frequencies, flux densities and magnetic field strengths is given. The measurements have shown that SMCs have less iron losses, i.e. mainly hysteresis and eddy current losses, for high frequencies due to their low electrical conductivity. However the magnetic permeance of SMCs is less than that of electrical steel and consequently a higher magnetic field strength and thus a higher current is needed to obtain the same magnetic flux density. Since higher current increases the ohmic losses, an estimation of the total losses, i.e. the sum of iron and ohmic losses is given at the end.