RHINO-MAG: Exploring Data-Driven Recursive Magnetic Material Models

Date: 25/06/2026

Time: 9:00 am

Presenter: Oliver Wallscheid, Hendrik Vater, Lukas Hölsch

Abstract: (Sponsored by TC 10) Driven by the MagNet Challenge 2025 (MC2), increased research interest is directed towards modeling transient magnetic fields within ferrite material. An accurate time-resolved and temperature-aware H-field prediction is essential for optimizing magnetic components in applications with quasi-stationary / non-stationary excitation waveforms. With this goal in mind, a selection of models with varying degrees of physically motivated structure are compared. Based on a Pareto investigation, a rather black-box gated recurrent unit (GRU) model structure with a graceful initialization setup is found to offer the most attractive model size vs. model accuracy trade-off, while the physics-inspired models performed worse. For a GRU-based model with only 325 parameters, a sequence relative error of 8.02 % and a normalized energy relative error of 1.07 % averaged across five different materials are achieved on unseen test data. With this excellent parameter efficiency, the proposed model won the first place in the performance category of the MC2.

Lukas Hölsch received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from HTWG Konstanz University of Applied Sciences, Germany, in 2020 and 2022 respectively. From 2022 to 2024 he worked as a Research Associate for the Department of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, Paderborn University, Germany. Since then, he has worked as a Research Associate at the Chair of Interconnected Automation Systems (IAS), University of Siegen, Germany. His research interests include power electronics as well as control of electrical drives, in particular the calculation of optimized pulse patterns for highly utilized permanent magnet synchronous machines. Hendrik Vater received the bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering from Paderborn University, Paderborn, Germany, in 2020 and 2023, respectively. He has been a research associate with the Department of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives, Paderborn University, from 2023 until 2025. Since 2026, he is a research associate with the Chair of Interconnected Automation Systems (IAS), University of Siegen, Germany. His research interests include system excitation, system identification, and intelligent control methods. Oliver Wallscheid (Senior Member, IEEE) received the bachelor’s and master’s degrees (Hons.) in industrial engineering and the doctorate degree (Hons.) in electrical engineering from Paderborn University, Germany, in 2010, 2012,and 2017, respectively. He has been a senior research fellow with the Department of Power Electronics and Electrical Drives and acting professor of the Automatic Control Department, Paderborn University. Since 2024, he has been a full professor at University Siegen, Germany, and heading the Interconnected Automation Systems (IAS) Chair. His research interests include modeling, design, and control of electrical power systems focusing on decentralized grids, power electronics, and electrical drives.