A second-order magnetocaloric model substance for standardization purposes.

Magneto Caloric Materials (MCM’s) are the working fluids (refrigerants) of magnetic heating/heat pumping, cooling/refrigeration and energy conversion. Physically they exhibit the magnetocaloric effect. The technologies applying these materials are coming increasingly into the focus of interest, and first approaches of magnetic refrigerators, e.g. wine coolers, etc., to refrigeration markets have been recently announced. The physical modeling of devices operating with the Magneto Caloric Effect (MCE) is often very cumbersome, because the experimental material data sets are incomplete or slightly erroneous, so that the obtained numerical results do not even fulfill energy conservation laws. In this article a phenomenological approach of modeling second-order magnetocaloric material properties is proposed, which allows highest accuracy in numerous kinds of numerical simulation processes. The presented model substance is also ideal for standardization purposes of physical modeling and numerical simulations of the operation of magnetic heaters, refrigerators and energy conversion machines.