Fujitsu has announced the development of a new technology for simulating magnetisation reversal, the reversal of magnetisation caused by magnetic fields or electrical currents.
The company used the K computer, a supercomputer developed by RIKEN and Fujitsu to perform massive calculations to successfully conduct the world’s first simulation of the magnetisation-reversal process in a permanent magnet.
This opens up new possibilities in the manufacture of electric motors, generators and other devices without relying on heavy rare earth elements such as Dysprosium.
The process of magnetisation reversal has been a subject of scientific study, but the huge volume of calculations required to accurately model magnetic materials has made it difficult to simulate that process.
Fujitsu developed a magnetic simulation technology that combines a finite-element method with micromagnetics. This technology makes it possible to compute magnetisation processes of magnetic materials with complex microstructures on a nanometer scale, which is many times smaller than conventional technology can manage, by executing enormous computations on a supercomputer using a massively parallel computing technique.
This combination technology paves the way toward R&D advances in new magnetic materials, including strong magnets free from heavy rare earth elements.
Simulations of magnetisation reversal in rare-earth magnets using this technology were performed on the K computer in cooperation with Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS). On September 5, the results of this simulation are being presented jointly by Fujitsu and NIMS at the 37th Annual Conference on Magnetics in Japan being held at Hokkaido University.
