Magnetocaloric bench: analytical model for gadolinium characteristics.

Abstract

Active magnetic refrigeration cycle analysis for different waveforms both magnetic field and heat transfer fluid velocity is an essential issue to design and implement heating and cooling applications based on magneto-caloric effect. Modelling the multiphysics phenomena that occur inside the magnetocaloric regenerators requires the coupling of magnetostatic, magnetocaloric and thermofluidic models. The global interest of the contribution presented here is to decrease the resolution time of the magnetostatic model. Indeed, the multi-physics model integrating this fast magnetostatic model needs much less computation time and ensures its compatibility with an optimization process. In this context, an analytical modelling of magnetostatic phenomena is developed by taking into account the nonlinear behaviour of the ferromagnetic external circuit as well as the active magnetocaloric material (MCM). The analytical model calculates the values of the magnetic field and the magnetic flux density at each point of the regenerator volume. Moreover, the model considers the dependency of magnetic model B(Hint) with the temperature in the case of the magnetocaloric material characteristics obtained experimentally.