Adoption of bonded magnets in place of sintered NdFeB: performance and economic considerations on a small power generator

Bonded magnets are giving promising results when adopted to replace expensive rare earth magnets. The possibility to "modulate" the magnetic characteristics by varying the binder percentage allows the opening of new lines of investigation and to face the problem of rare earths cost. In the paper a small power generator prototype has been equipped with bonded magnets realized in the Authors' Laboratories; it has been tested and compared with the original generator mounting NdFeB sintered magnets. FEM simulations are validated by means of experimental tests. Economic comparisons are proposed.