Case Study: ETREMA Products achieves optimized magnetostrictive transducer designs and reduced deformation with COMSOL Multiphysics

Making Smart Materials Smarter with Multiphysics Simulation

ETREMA Products, a commercial producer of Terfenol‑D, develops magnetostrictive transducers for defense and industrial applications but faced the challenge of designing devices governed by tightly coupled, nonlinear magnetic, mechanical, electrical, and thermal physics. To move beyond disjointed hand calculations and single‑physics methods, ETREMA adopted Comsol and its COMSOL Multiphysics software to enable systems‑level, multiphysics finite‑element modeling of their transducers.

Using Comsol's COMSOL Multiphysics, ETREMA built single‑physics and fully coupled models (permanent magnets and coils, magnetic fields, structural stress/modal analysis, and heat transfer) to optimize magnetic circuits, coil/electronics placement, and structural design. The simulations guided redesigns that reduced bending and stress at mechanical interfaces, confined stray magnetic fields away from electronics, identified and eliminated problematic vibration modes, and produced impedance and displacement results that closely matched experimental measurements—validating the approach and improving transducer performance and reliability.

ETREMA Products

Julie Slaughter

Senior Engineer