Every day, more and more electrical devices are produced, such as electric motors and actuators, which tend to operate according to their intended purpose with minimal maintenance. This is possible if they are assembled with the right input material, which needs to be tested at various stages of production. The presented approach proposes using the existing measuring equipment, combined with the finite element method and an optimization method, to determine the relative permeability and conductivity—in a contactless manner—from electrical measurements for magnetic steel materials. A comparison was made among three models: a whole 3D model, a 1/8 symmetrical 3D model, and a 2D axisymmetric model. During the research, the importance of using a skin-depth mesh was emphasized to obtain the correct results. A novel approach is used to analyze and optimize both the permeability and conductivity using a single model, optimization, and measurements. The optimized Finite Element Model shows very strong model conditioning, as tested with reference data, yielding great results with the measured data.
Frangež et al. (2026) studied this question.