Wikipedia provides a mathematical explanation. Can I get the intuitive one? I'd like to, for example, understand a ferrite datasheet. These usually have graphs of H vs B, and the definition of permeability depends on understanding the relationship of H and B.
Also, I wonder: I was able to learn a great deal about electric fields before I knew what "fields" were. I learned about voltage and Ohm's law and so on, which a physicist might explain with a field, but which the electrical engineer explains with simpler concepts, like the difference between two points in a circuit. Is there a similar, simpler explanation of H vs B fields that is of more relevance to the electrical engineer, and less to the physicist?
Best Answer
H is the driving force in coils and is ampere turns per metre where the metre part is the length of the magnetic circuit. In a transformer it's easy to determine this length because 99% of the flux is contained in the core. A coil with an air core is difficult as you might imagine.
I think of B as a by-product of H and B is made bigger by the permeability of the core.
In electrostatics, E (electric field strength) is the equivalent of H (magnetic field strength) and it's somewhat easier to visualize. Its units are volts per metre and also gives rise to another quantity, electric flux density (D) when multiplied by the permittivity of the material in which it exists: -
\$\dfrac{B}{H} = \mu_0\mu_R\$ and
\$\dfrac{D}{E} = \epsilon_0\epsilon_R\$
Regarding ferrite data sheets, the BH curve is the important one - it tells you the permeability of the material and this directly relates to how much inductance you can get for one turn of wire.
It will also indicate how much energy could be lost when reversing the magnetic field - this of course will always happen when ac driven - not all the domains in the ferrite return to produce an average of zero magnetism when the current is removed and when reversing the current the remaining domains need to be neutralized before the core magnetism goes negative - this requires a small amount of energy on most ferrites and gives rise to the term hysteresis loss.
Other important graphs in a ferrite data sheet are the permeability versus frequency graph and permeability versus temperature.
From personal experience of having designed a few transformers, I find them tortuous in that I never seem to naturally remember anything other than the basics each time I begin a new design and this is annoying - in this answer I had to double check everything except the units of H!