The magnetic material's deformation caused by magnetostriction is represented by an equivalent set of mechanical forces, giving the same deformation to the material as magnetostriction does. This is done in a way similar to how thermal stresses are usually incorporated into stress analysis. The resulting magnetostriction force distribution can be superposed onto other force distributions, like the magnetic force distribution. These two force distributions are the key ingredients of a numerically strong coupling of the magnetic and the mechanical finite element systems.