Numerical analysis on the performance of a magnetic refrigerator with multiple materials.

Room-temperature magnetic refrigerators are an attractive alternative refrigeration system that does not require halon replacement. This paper describes the performance of a magnetic refrigerator that uses multiple magnetic materials, including gadolinium and gadolinium alloys. We expect that packing multiple magnetic materials into active magnetic refrigerator ducts should achieve a wide temperature range. We focus on the temperature span and refrigeration power. In addition, we compare experimental results with one-dimensional numerical simulations, which use the experimentally obtained and predicted magnetocaloric properties of the magnetic materials.