Abstract: Comparison of two approaches for the simulation of
the dynamic behaviour of a permanent magnet linear actuator is
presented. These are full coupled model, where the electromagnetic
field, electric circuit and mechanical motion problems are solved
simultaneously, and decoupled model, where first a set of static
magnetic filed analysis is carried out and then the electric circuit and
mechanical motion equations are solved employing bi-cubic spline
approximations of the field analysis results. The results show that the
proposed decoupled model is of satisfactory accuracy and gives more
flexibility when the actuator response is required to be estimated for
different external conditions, e.g. external circuit parameters or
mechanical loads.