The effect of Shaking on Magnetic Shields

The increase of the shielding factor due to shaking was measured in a scale model for a magnetically shielded room. The increase was found to be 7 dB for a single-layer square cylinder biased by the Earth's magnetic field. The shielding factor of a large-volume three-layer Mumetal® room was estimated to increase by a factor of 30, thus confirming the feasibility of shaking in magnetic shields. The shaking parameters, amplitude, and frequency are not critical according to the experiments. Winding the shaking coils along the edges of the cubic shield leads to minimum disturbances inside the cube, and the winding can also be applied to demagnetize the shield by an alternating field of 25 A/m, 50 Hz. The relative incremental permeability of Mumetal was studied as a function of the shaking and biasing fields. The permeability was found to increase considerably by shaking and by decreasing the biasing field. With zero biasing and with shaking field of H s = 5 A/m root mean square (rms), 50 Hz, the permeability reached its maximum value of 89 000, which is sevenfold the value without shaking.