Development and validation of a low magnetic permeability measurement setup

Measurement of relative permeability has a significant role in deciding the suitability of magnetic material for various industrial applications. Several developments and modifications have been made that can directly or indirectly measure the permeability of such materials. However, these developments suffer from various limitations, such as low accuracy, poor resolution, and high cost of measurement. In this work, a new measurement setup has been developed to precisely measure relative permeability in the range of 1-2. The setup has been designed based on the flux metric (solenoid) method in accordance with ASTM A 342 and EN 60404-15. A comparative analysis has been performed for known materials using different flux meters to verify the performance of the measuring coil. The developed setup was further validated against the magnetic moment method, i.e., vibrating sample magnetometer (VSM), regarding the permeability measurement of these materials. The results depicted a close agreement between the output of the developed setup and VSM data. The developed system claims a relative error of less than 1% with respect to VSM in measuring the permeability of materials. Measurement uncertainty for the developed system was also determined. Such an accurate and low-cost measurement setup can become a possible solution for the permeability measurement of feebly magnetic materials.