Magnetostatic interactions and forces between cylindrical permanent magnets

Permanent magnets of various shapes are often utilized in magnetic actuators, sensors or releasable magnetic fasteners. Knowledge of the magnetic force is required to control devices reliably. Here, we introduce ananalytical expression for calculating the attraction force between two cylindrical permanent magnets on the assumption of uniform magnetization. Although the assumption is not fulfilled exactly in cylindrical magnets, we obtain a very good agreement between the calculated and measured forces between two identical cylindrical magnets and within an array of NdFeB cylindrical magnets. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.