Ansoft Corp. announced the availability of a new library of permanent magnet materials from Shin-Etsu Magnetics Inc. for its Maxwell® electromagnetic field simulation software. The library contains more than 31 high-performance permanent magnets defined at different operating temperatures using rare earth elements that can be downloaded by Ansoft customers and are ready for use within Maxwell.

Brad Lucas, national sales manager for Shin-Etsu's Magnetic Materials Research Center, said, "We are pleased our industry-leading materials are now included in Ansoft's Maxwell. We believe this will be very beneficial to those wishing to design magnetic circuits utilizing the most advanced materials currently available."

Permanent magnet materials are used in many applications, including motors, sensors and actuators. Maxwell users now have access to the latest materials from Shin-Etsu to use directly within their simulations of new or existing designs. "The ability to have access to accurate material properties is very important for our customers," said Scott Stanton, technical director at Ansoft. "Often users must contact the material vendor directly to obtain the measurements, and commonly they do not have accurate or complete measurement data available. Shin-Etsu working with Ansoft makes it very convenient for our global customer base to evaluate the performance of their materials within a design simulated in Maxwell."