MAGNETIC_FIELD

Magnetic field classes based on the analytical solution for coils and wire segments, in 2D and 3D.

Installation

Installation requires simply that you download MAGNETIC_FIELD and add the base directory (the one that contains the +magnetic_field directory) to your Matlab path.

Dependencies

A recent version of Matlab is needed to run the code. The code has been developed in Matlab 2016a Academic version.

MAGNETIC_FIELD depends on other Matlab packages that you can download from my GitHub account: utilities and constants_and_units. These packages must be installed and added to your Matlab path beforehand.

Usage

The code is structured into several Matlab classes as follows:

element, element_2d, element_3d (abstract classes): all magnetic field generator elements inherit from these parent classes. Used to set some standard interfaces; not intended for direct usage by user. They also provide some commodity functions to calculate the field on a plane and to plot a field component on a plane.
loop_2d, loop_3d: analytical magnetic field of a single current loop of zero thickness, after solving the singularity for Br at the axis. The 2d version defines the magnetic streamfunction psi. The most thoroughly tested classes.
library_2d, library_3d: allow to define some interpolation libraries for the fields and interpolate there.
path_3d: the magnetic field of a wire defined by a set of nodes, computed in a step-wise manner with Biot-Savart's Law. Not extensively tested yet; could contain errors.
wire_2d, wire_3d: the analytic magnetic field of a straight infinite conductor. Not extensively tested yet; could contain errors.
uniform_2d, uniform_3d: a constant, uniform magnetic field in a given direction.
array (abstract class): sets the basic interfaces for arrays of generators (i.e. collections of generator elements).
array_2d, array_3d: these are classes that allow collecting many generator elements in an array, and redefine some methods to compute field of all elements simultaneously.

Usage is straight forward. Start by creating an object of the desired class and setting its parameters, then call one of its methods:

mf = magnetic_field.loop_2d('RL',5,'I',10); % Create loop_2d object
[psi,Bz,Br] = mf.field_2d(0,0); % query the field at z=0, r=0

Testing

Unit tests are found in the /test subdirectory. After adding the package to your Matlab path, you can run all tests by executing runtests from this subdirectory.

Contributing

If you have any comments for improvement or are interested in contributing to the continued development of this or any of my other codes, you can contact us through our website.

For updates and news, follow us on Twitter: @ep2lab..

Acknowledging

This program is released as open source in the hope that it will be useful to other people.

If you find it useful and/or use it in any of your works, we kindly ask you to acknowledge it by citing the code directly as:

Mario Merino (2017). mariomerinomartinez/magnetic_field: First release DOI:10.5281/zenodo.496131

ep2lab/magnetic_field