Preisach Images of a Simple Mechanical System

This work is an an early stage of a larger project aiming at answering the question whether or not the Preisach map is really fingerprinting magnetic materials. More precisely, we are interested whether the Preisach model of magnetic hysteresis indeed contains any physics or is just a convenient modeling tool. To this extent we study a very simple mechanical system, thus fully tractable, subjected to the external force. Despite of its simplicity, our model captures all the fundamental features of real magnetic materials, namely their hysteretic behavior, coercivity, remanent magnetization, and saturation at high fields. Both the overall shape of major hysteresis loop as well as first order reversal curves are reproduced quite correctly; they are very similar to those observed in magnetic materials. The model essentially consists of a single, spring loaded, rigid and rotative bar with non-zero friction torque. The length of a projection of this bar onto the direction of an external force is identified with magnetization. The friction torque and the spring constant are the only freely adjustable parameters of our model. Here we investigate, and present, their influence on the inferred Preisach maps.