I have started this thread in the hope that we can get some experiments done to prove an important point about magnetic energy. I have long held the view that in magnetized ferromagnetic material, be it soft or hard, there is an enormous quantity of magnetic energy stored in the inter-atomic space. This is not recognized by existing theory but IMO that theory is significantly flawed. It uses a charactristic called magnetization M that has dimensions of dipole-moment per cubic meter, it being the volume density of the aligned electron dipoles that are responsible for the effect. That should really be a number density, something like 1028 dipoles per cubic meter, but the manner in which the science has developed M is treated as a continuous attribute filling all space within the ferromagnet. That is as ridiculous as imagining that the mass of electrons and nuclei doesn't reside within those particles, but is spread around all space within matter. I started writing papers on this 14 years ago and the fourth version I published in 2005. It is appended here for your perusal.
When you charge an inductor that has a ferromagnetic core to store energy of value 1/2Li2 the actual energy stored in that inner space is Chi times that value, where Chi is the magnetic susceptibility, very close to the relative permeability muR (because muR=1+Chi). The additional hidden energy comes from the electron dipoles, not from the current source. My reason for bringing this up now is the possibility of releasing that large quantity of hidden energy simply by taking the core material above its Curie point. With relative permeabilities that can reach as high as 106 (Metglas) I think that sort of huge energy gain is worth striving for, even if the requirement for thermal driving means that the repetition rate will be very low. My vision is something that is driven alternately with thermal heating and cooling pulses thus alternating about the Curie temperature and releasing large value energy pulses at a low repetition rate. However the initial experiment can be a simple one-shot, just heat a charged inductor to above the Curie point and see what happens.
My reasoning on this assumes that a shorted coil around the core will, at the Curie switching point, hold the magnetic field at its pre-value even though the dipole alignments are destroyed. Because the inductance has dropped significantly to that of an air-cored one, the current through the shorted coil has to increase in value to take the place of the now defunct electron dipoles. You now have an air-cored coil that can discharge into a resistive load, and that energy is the original hidden energy within the ferromagnetic material. Is anyone willing to take this on? Of course the inductor must be wound in toroidal form on a ring core, and that core can't be enclosed within a plastic case (which rules out the Metglas mega-mu core), and attention must be paid to the magnet wire insulation that has to survive the heating.
Smudge
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