• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.114-118
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• 2002

We introduce a design technique for homogeneous magnets using evolution strategy. The method has several advantages over existing techniques including: it allows complete flexibility in geometric constraints on the shape of both the coil and the homogeneous volume; it guarantees a globally optimal solution, and it automatically searches the minimum number of coils that satisfies given constraints.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.521-527
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• 1988

At present superconducting magnets have been feasible for many applications which require high field or highly homogeneous field that it is too difficult to be produced by conventional electromagnets. This paper is a stuny on Donble Helmholtz superconducting magnet and newly configurated superconducting magnet that realize highly homogeneous field with the minimum magnet volume. Nonlinear programming method is effectively used for the minimum volume of superconducting magnet that realizes the desired field intensity and high homogeneity. The results on Double Helmholtz and newly configurated superducting magnets that are presented in this paper are largely improved.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07b
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• pp.590-592
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• 2001

We introduce a technique for designing homogeneous magnets using linear programming. The method has several advantages over existing techniques including: it allows complete flexibility in arbitrary geometric constraints on both the coil locations and the shape of the homogeneous volume; it guarantees a globally optimal solution, and it automatically choose the minimum number of coils necessary for the constraints.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.1 no.4
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• pp.461-465
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• 2006

This paper presents a useful and simple method to design the passive skimming system for homogeneous permanent magnets based on numerical optimization. To simulate the effects of manufacturing and assembling tolerances, the actual geometrical parameter of the magnet with a derivation is suggested. Then, the optimal design model oi a passive shim system is set up to correct the derivative of field homogeneity. The numbers, sizes and locations of the passive shims are optimized by the steepest descent algorithm combined with design sensitivity analysis. Two implementations show that the proposed method can achieve the required homogeneity of the field with the minimum quantity of ferromagnetics.

• Journal of Powder Materials
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.471-476
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• 2008

Sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets have been widely used due to their excellent magnetic properties, especially for driving motors of hybrid and electric vehicles. The microstructure of Nd-Fe-B magnets strongly affects their magnetic properties, in particular the coercivity. Therefore, a post-sintering process like heat-treatment is required for improving the magnetic properties of Nd-Fe-B sintered magnets. In this study, cyclic heat treatment was performed at temperatures between $350^{\circ}C$ and $450^{\circ}C$ up to 16 cycles in order to control microstructures such as size and shape of the Nd-rich phase without grain growth of the $Nd_{2}Fe_{14}B$ phase. The 2 cycles specimen at this temperature range showed more homogeneous microstructure which leads to higher coercivity of 35 kOe than as-sintered one.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.14-19
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• 2012

Shimming, active and/or passive, is indispensable for most MR (magnetic resonance) magnets where homogeneous magnetic fields are required within target spaces. Generally, shimming consists of two steps, field mapping and correcting of fields, and they are recursively repeated until the target field homogeneity is reached. Thus, accuracy of the field mapping is crucial for fast and efficient shimming of MR magnets. For an accurate shimming, a "magnetic" center, which is a mathematical origin for harmonic analysis, must be carefully defined, Although the magnetic center is in general identical to the physical center of a magnet, it is not rare that both centers are different particularly in HTS (high temperature superconducting) magnets of which harmonic field errors, especially high orders, are significantly dependent on a location of the magnetic center. This paper presents a new algorithm, based on a field mapping theory with harmonic analysis, to define the best magnetic center of an MR magnet in terms of minimization of pre-shimming field errors. And the proposed algorithm is tested with simulation under gaussian noise environment.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.97-102
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• 2015

The waste of sintered Nd-Fe-B magnets was recycled using the method of dopingPrNd nanoparticles. The effect of PrNd nanoparticle doping on the magnetic properties of the regenerated magnets has been studied. As the content of the PrNd nanoparticles increases, the coercivity increases monotonically, whereas both the remanence and the maximum energy products reach the maximum values for 4 wt% PrNd doping. Microstructural observation reveals that the appropriate addition of PrNd nanoparticles improves the magnetic properties and refines the grain. Domain investigation shows that the self-pinning effect of the rare earth (Re)-rich phase is enhanced by PrNd nano-particle doping. Compared to the magnet with 4 wt% PrNd alloy prepared using the dual-alloy method, the regenerated magnet doped with the same number of PrNd nanoparticles exhibits better magnetic properties and a more homogeneous microstructure. Therefore, it is concluded that PrNd nanoparticle doping is an efficient method for recycling the leftover scraps of Nd-Fe-B magnets.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.179-201
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• 2019

Portable low-cost magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems have the potential to enable "point-of-care" and timely MRI diagnosis, and to make this imaging modality available to routine scans and to people in underdeveloped countries and areas. With simplicity, no maintenance, no power consumption, and low cost, permanent magnets/magnet arrays/magnet assemblies are attractive to be used as a source of static magnetic field to realize the portability and to lower the cost for an MRI scanner. However, when taking the canonical Fourier imaging approach and using linear gradient fields, homogeneous fields are required in a scanner, resulting in the facts that either a bulky magnet/magnet array is needed, or the imaging volume is too small to image an organ if the magnet/magnet array is scaled down to a portable size. Recently, with the progress on image reconstruction based on non-linear gradient field, static field patterns without spatial linearity can be used as spatial encoding magnetic fields (SEMs) to encode MRI signals for imaging. As a result, the requirements for the homogeneity of the static field can be relaxed, which allows permanent magnets/magnet arrays with reduced sizes, reduced weight to image a bigger volume covering organs such as a head. It offers opportunities of constructing a truly portable low-cost MRI scanner. For this exciting potential application, permanent magnets/magnet arrays have attracted increased attention recently. A magnet/magnet array is strongly associated with the imaging volume of an MRI scanner, image reconstruction methods, and RF excitation and RF coils, etc. through field patterns and field homogeneity. This paper offers a review of permanent magnets and magnet arrays of different kinds, especially those that can be used for spatial encoding towards the development of a portable and low-cost MRI system. It is aimed to familiarize the readers with relevant knowledge, literature, and the latest updates of the development on permanent magnets and magnet arrays for MRI. Perspectives on and challenges of using a permanent magnet/magnet array to supply a patterned static magnetic field, which does not have spatial linearity nor high field homogeneity, for image reconstruction in a portable setup are discussed.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.138-142
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• 2002

Magnetic properties, microstructure and texture of NdFeB magnets fabricated by a modified hot working process from commercial melt-spun powders (Magnequench; MQPA, MQPB and MQPB＋) have been investigated. The hot-pressed isotropic magnet made from MQPA powder, which contains higher Nd content than that of MQPB or MQPB＋, shows higher coercivity. The magnet also shows homogenous and fine grains with higher coercivity for higher consolidation pressure. The hot-deformed MQPA magnet shows a strong anisotropy along the press direction with homogeneous platelet Nd$_2$Fe$_{14}$B grains of 50∼100nm in thickness and 200∼500nm in length. The hot-deformed MQPB＋ magnet, however, shows low remanence and low coercivity. The microstructure of the magnet consists of two areas; undeformed Nd$_2$Fe$_{14}$B grains and well-aligned but large grains with 3∼4 $\mu$m in length. Low Nd content attributes to the formation of the two different area.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.6
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• pp.1059-1063
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• 2010

Shimming is an important technique in development of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) magnets where image resolution is highly dependent on magnetic field homogeneity. Classically, shimming may be categorized into two types: 1) active shimming that incorporates with extra coils and precise tuning of their currents; and 2)passive shimming that incorporates with pieces of steel placed in a bore of a main magnet and their uniform magnetization under homogeneous external fields. Additional magnetic fields, produced by the coils and/or the steel sheets, compensate original magnetic field from the main magnet in such a way that the total field becomes more homogeneous. In this paper, we developed a passive shimming method based on linear programming optimization. Linear programming is well known to be highly efficient to find a global minimum in various linear problems. We firstly confirmed the linearity of magnetization of ferromagnetic pieces under a presence of external magnetic fields. Then, we adopted the linear programming to find optimized allocation of the steel pieces in the inner bore of a main magnet to improve field homogeneity.