HYBRID ELECTROMAGNETIC

BRAKING SYSTEM
Project report submitted to
Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering & Management,
Nagpur,in partial fulfilment of the
requirement for the award of
degree of
Bachelor of Engineering

In

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
By

Mayank Deshpande
Mayank Khandelwal
Kunal Singh
Aman Singh
Prasannakartik Addepalli

Guide
Dr. Vishal Shukla

Mechanical Engineering
Shri Ramdeobaba College of Engineering &Management,
Nagpur 440013

(An Autonomous Institute affiliated to Rashtrasant Tukdoji Maharaj Nagpur

University, Nagpur)

APRIL 2021
 2

CONTENTS
Abstract 3

1. Introduction 3

2. Hybrid Braking System 5

2.1 Braking Torque Analysis of ECB 5
2.2 Variation of Torque with Speed and Current 7
2.3 Force produced by EMBS 9
2.3.1 Heat Analysis

3. Design and Modelling 10

3.1 Material 10
3.1.1 Disc 10
3.1.2 Extension spring 10
3.1.3 Friction Material 11
3.2 Electromagnets 11
3.3 Modelling 12

4. Result and Discussion 14

5. Conclusion 14

References 15
 3

ABSTRACT

This Project report proposes a Hybrid braking system consisting of Eddy current
brake (ECB) and Electromagnetic Brake (EMBS). Mathematical formulation of brak-
ing torque, Braking Force, Temperature and Speed, has been done. A 3D model of
our Project has been developed in Fusion 360 and its analysis has been done. At the
end of this paper, advantages of using this Hybrid braking system over currently used
conventional braking system has been discussed. Brief overview for guiding the brak-
ing system has also been established.

.
1. INTRODUCTION

Nowadays in an era of green technology when the world is moving towards Electric
Substituents of Natural Resources it has become a priority to find suitable alterna-
tives to various products using natural resources. Hence a move to new Environment
Friendly Braking System is need of the day. Presently used conventional Frictional
and Hydraulic Braking Systems cause heavy Air Pollution.

Brake wear debris represents a big hazard to environment (Kukutschova et al) [1]. It
contains several hazardous elements that may interact with DNA of living organisms
and cause carcinogenesis (Uexkull et al) [2].

The Conventional Contact type brake system has many problems such as time delay
response due to pressure build up, brake pad wear due to contact movement, bulky
size, and low braking performance in high-speed regions due to heating of brake
disc. Thus, a new more powerful and stable braking system is required to ensure
reliability and safety of vehicles. So, in order to solve the problem of traditional brak-
ing system, Eddy current braking is a good choice. It has many advantages like no
wear and tear due to contactless braking principle, seamless performance in high
speeds, rapid responding time and many more already acknowledged by peers. But
Eddy current brake has shortcomings too like poor braking ability during low speeds
and unable to provide holding torque.

Eddy current is one of the most outstanding electromagnetic Induction phenomena.

They appear in variety of everyday life situations and are often undesirable due to
their dissipative nature (e.g., Transformer cores, metallic parts of generators and mo-
tors etc.). However, in some cases it can be made of great use. When there is change
in magnetic flux passing through a non-ferromagnetic conductor, current is induced
in the disc and the direction of current is such that it follows the Lenz’s law and is
opposite to the direction of the field that created it.
 4

Heavy research has been done regarding overcoming of this shortcoming of eddy
current braking. People created a hybrid braking system consisting of both Eddy cur-
rent brake (ECB) and a substitute brake like Hydraulic brakes or Frictional brakes.
Sebastian Gay [3] presented an integrated braking mechanism consisting of Eddy
current Brake (ECB) and Frictional brake. Ren He et. al [4] gave another hybrid sys-
tem having Eddy Current and Electro hydraulic ABS brake system. He showed the
use of Eddy Current brake as an ABS by controlling the current and its advantage
over the conventional ABS used. But all of these are very bulky and are not that
environmentally friendly.

Another braking system developed is Electromagnetic braking (EMBS) system. It

works on basic magnetic property of attraction. It consists of a ferromagnetic brake
disc and an electromagnet, when the brake is applied the electromagnet gets acti-
vated and it is attracted toward the ferromagnetic disc. The friction material attached
to the electromagnet is rubbed against the surface of disc which converts kinetic en-
ergy of disc to heat due to friction. But one of the biggest drawback of this system is
the heat produced is very high and wear and tear is also high. It is used in various
cranes and locomotives.

In this project report, a new hybrid braking system, achieved through the combination
of Eddy current brakes (ECB) and the Electromagnetic Brakes (EMBS) has been
proposed. It consists of a conventional Eddy current braking system and a subsidiary
Electromagnetic braking system to provide necessary braking force in lower speeds
and provide holding torque. The Brake disc for EMBS is smaller and concentrically
attached to the ECB disc. The EMBS is activated only when torque produced is not
optimum to decelerate otherwise Eddy current braking system will be used, this helps
in overcoming the drawbacks of both the systems i.e., low speed braking torque is
achieved and since the EMBS is used at lower speed the heat produced and wear
and tear produced due to friction is close to minimum. This braking system can also
be used to provide similar ABS results as shown by Gay [3], Ren He [4] and Lee [5].
Various Sensors and ECU can be used to achieve the activation of EMBS. The
method to calculate the braking torque produced by the brakes, Velocity of Activation
of EMBS and its model and analysis using Octave, Fusion 360 has been provided in
this report. It has various advantages like:
(i) As the disc used for both ECB and EMBS are of different material (one is
ferromagnetic and one is non-ferromagnetic) and sizes, so they do not in-
terfere with each other resulting in smooth braking curves.
(ii) Energy can be saved by converting the kinetic energy of wheel into elec-
tricity and use it for braking.
(iii) Individually both ECB and EMBS have their merits and the Hybrid braking
system can get all the merits of ECB system and EMBS system, the whole
performance of hybrid braking system is better than ECB or EMBS respec-
tively.
(iv) Their reliability in all kinds of weather along with low maintenance require-
ments makes magnetic braking systems a safe choice compared to pure
mechanical or hydraulic systems.
 5

The main objective of the project report is to provide a robust mathematical sup-
port and design of the Hybrid brake system. The research result will show that the
Hybrid system used here is better and overcomes many problems of the conven-
tional braking system as well as the individual ECB and EMBS systems.

2. HYBRID BRAKING SYSTEM

In order to analyze the braking force distribution between ECB and EMBS, this work
established three mathematical models as follows. These models mainly describe
the relationship between brake torque, brake current and wheel speed.

2.1 BRAKING TORQUE ANALYSIS OF ECB

Many analytical methods have been proposed for estimation of eddy currents. Simeul
et al [6,15,16] calculated the amount of eddy current and breaking torque by assum-
ing that on the power dissipated by the eddy current is used for generating the brak-
ing torque. Louis et al [7] obtain the braking force by Lorentz force law by using an
imaginary current path lumped on the disc and resistance obtained by experiments.
In this work theoretical model proposed by Lee and Park [5] has been followed.

The iron core shape used in this study was a round shape in diameter of 60 mm. For
this analysis, n, i, lg, and represent the number of electromagnet turns, applied cur-
rent, airgap and permeability of air, respectively. Here, the 𝜇0 been taken as 12.568
x10 -7 N.A-2. For the electrical conductivity, it was 2.73 x 10 7 Ω.m-1 for Al6061. In Eq.
1, the magnetic flux density can be expressed in the form of
𝜇0 𝑛𝑖
𝐵= (1)
𝑙𝑔

While the current density, J that been induced at center of the pole can be ex-
pressed in Eq. 2 as

𝐽 = 𝜎൫𝑅𝜃ሶ𝐵൯ (2)

where 𝜎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝜃ሶ are the electrical conductivity and angular velocity of the brake disc
respectively. If all the power dissipated by the eddy current, Pd which is the power
dissipation assumed to be converted to generate braking torque, which can be ex-
pressed as Eq. 3

𝑇𝑏 = 𝑃𝜃𝑑ሶ (3)
The total power dissipation, 𝑃𝑑 can be described as Eq. 4
 6

𝑃𝑑 = 𝜌𝐽2 𝑉𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑚𝑒 = 𝜎𝑅2 𝑆𝑑𝜃ሶ 2 𝐵2 (4)

Here, indicates the disc resistivity. For the braking torque calculation as in Eq.5, S,
R and 𝜃ሶ represent the pole area, distance between center of the disc and pole center,
and angular speed, respectively. The braking torque can be expressed in the form of

𝑇𝑏 = 𝜎𝑅2 𝑆𝑑𝜃ሶ 𝐵 (5)

It can also be expressed as,

𝑇𝑏 = 𝑇𝑖 𝑖 2 𝜃ሶ (6)

Where braking coefficient 𝑇𝑖 is

2 2
𝑇𝑖 = 𝛼𝐶𝜎𝑅 𝑆𝑑(𝜇𝑙0𝑔𝑁) (7)

Where 𝛼 and 𝐶 are the modified factors:

1 1 1
𝛼 = 1– [4𝑡𝑎𝑛(𝜓) + 𝜓𝑙𝑛(1 + ) − 𝑙𝑛(1 + 𝜓 2 )] (8)
2𝜋 𝜓2 𝜓

1
𝐶 = 0.5[1 − ] (9)
𝜓𝜋(1+𝑅𝑏 /𝑅𝑤 )2 (𝑅𝑤 −𝑅𝑏 )2

Fig.1 Forces acting on a rotating wheel

From Fig. 1 equations of dynamic forces acting on the wheel can be computed as:
𝑚 𝑚𝑔
𝑥ሷ = −𝐹𝑓 = −𝜇ℎ 𝑁𝑓 = −𝜇ℎ (10)
4 4
 7

𝐼𝜃ሷ = −𝑇𝑏 − 𝑇𝑐 + 𝑅0 𝐹𝑓 = −𝑇𝑖 𝑖 2 𝜃ሶ − 𝑇𝑐 + 𝑅0 𝜇ℎ 𝑁𝑓 (11)

where 𝐹𝑓 , 𝑁𝑓 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑇𝑐 are the friction force, normal force, and summation of the
Coloumb and viscous friction torque acting on a rotating wheel, respectively.
𝜇ℎ , 𝑚, 𝐼 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑅0 are the braking force coefficient, mass of the vehicle, mass moment
of inertia of the wheel, and the radius of wheel respectively. From the above equa-
tions when 𝜇ℎ is determined, braking distance and time can be calculated.

Fig.2 Variation of Tb with current (I) and ꞷ

2.2 Variation of Torque with speed and current

Equation (5) shows the proportionality of brake torque with speed of brake disk when
the current is kept constant. But as the speed of the disc increases this relation be-
comes invalid. Wouterse [7] suggested as the speed of the disc crosses a critical
speed (𝑣𝑐 ) the braking torque starts decreasing as the speed of the disc increases.
This is due to magnetic induction effect due to the formation of eddy current in disc.
Below the critical speed, he proposed that the magnetic induction effects caused by
the eddy currents was negligible compared to the original field 𝐵0 , and there was no
fringing. Wouterse’s equation for the critical speed was given as:
 8

2 1 𝜎 𝑙𝑔
𝑣𝑐 =
𝜇0
ට𝑐𝜉 𝑑 ට 𝐷 (12)

Fig 3. Different speed regions of magnetic braking

where 𝜇0 , 𝜎, 𝑑, 𝑙𝑔 , 𝐷 are permeability of free space, specific resistance of disc mate-

rial, disc thickness, air gap and pole area diameter. Wouterse estimated the param-
eter 𝜉 as unity. Factor c is the current return path under the pole and makes the
model more accurate for real system with disc of finite sizes, here

1 1 1
𝑐 = [1 − ] (13)
2 4 ቀ1+ 𝑅 ቁ2 (2𝑟−𝑅)2
2𝑟 𝐷

Where r is the disc radius, R is the distance between pole center and disc center, D
is the pole diameter.

Variation of braking torque due to current mainly depends on two things: Disc Thick-
ness and Air Gap. Baharom and Nuawi [9] proved that braking torque increases as
disc thickness increases and air gap decreases. Fig.5 shows the variation of Braking
Torque vs. current for Al6061 disc, thickness of 5mm, air gap 1mm,
max. speed of DC motor 2500 rpm and 500 turns of electromagnet.
 9

Fig.4 Braking torque vs. 𝜔 Fig.5 Braking torque vs. I(amp)

Fig.4 gives the ideal condition braking torque variation when angular velocity is var-
ied. Clearly the given speed is less than the critical speed of the brake disc and hence
linearity of the graph.

2.3 Force produced by EMBS

The Brake disc and Electromagnet are placed parallel to each other and have gap of
1mm between them. The disc material used is stainless steel and electromagnets
with 800 turns is used. When the current is provided to the electromagnet, friction
material comes in contact with the brake disk. The brake force can be varied by ad-
justing current provided to the magnet and number of electromagnet turns.

When the brake pads are in contact with the disc, the retarding force acting is only
frictional force and it converts the kinetic energy to heat energy. The frictional force
is acting axial the surface area of disc and friction material.

According to the friction force calculation done by Naveen.S [9] friction force required
to produce desired deceleration is given by:

𝑑𝐴
𝐹 = ∮ 𝑝𝑑𝐴 = 𝑐∮ (14)
𝑟

The braking Torque is:

𝑇𝑏 = 𝜇∮𝑝𝑟𝑑𝐴 = 𝜇𝐴𝑐 = 𝜇𝐴𝐹

𝑑𝐴 (15)
∮𝑟
 10

2.3.1 HEAT ANALYSIS

The heat generated EMBS is mainly due to kinetic energy.

1
𝐾𝐸 = 𝑚1 𝑣 2 (16)
2

where, 𝑚1 , 𝑣 are mass of vehicle & velocity of vehicle respectively

This kinetic energy is converted to heat energy while braking due to friction between
brake disc and friction pads.

𝑄 = 𝑚2 𝐶∆𝑇 (17)
𝑄
∆𝑇 = (18)
𝑚2 𝐶

where, 𝑚2 , 𝑄, 𝐶 & ∆𝑇 are mass of brake disc, heat generated, specific heat of brake
disc & the change in temperature.

3. DESIGN & MODELLING

3.1 Material

3.1.1 Disc

The material of the rotor disc used for ECB must be optimized in order to minimize
the time constant, 𝜏 and minimize the disc’s moment of inertia, I. There are two strong
candidates in our selection of material which are Al7075 and Al6061. According to
experimentation done by Bahrom et al [8] Al6061 is better than Al7075 due to its
higher Electrical Conductivity. Another reason for using Aluminum as disc material
due to its low resistivity as Power dissipated and braking torque has inverse propor-
tionality [14].
For EMBS disc a ferromagnetic material is required which is thermally stable and has
high wear resistance. Stainless steel can be used as the brake disc due to its ferro-
magnetism and ability to sustain large amount of heat.
 11

ECB EMBS

MATERIAL AL6061 STAINLESS STEEL

RADIUS OF DISC, r 190mm 140mm

DISC THICKNESS, d 5mm 5mm

SPECIFIC RESISTIVITY, 2.73 * 107 1.45 * 106

𝜎

3.1.2 Extension Spring

A spring is a device which is used to store mechanical energy. The material used to
construct a spring can be decided based on design and operating environment.
When a spring is compressed or stretched, it exerts a force which is directly propor-
tional to change in length of the spring. The spring constant of a spring is the ratio of
change in force exerted and change in deflection of the spring. It has unit of force
divided by distance, i.e., N/m.

3.1.3 FRICTION MATERIAL

The most important member in a EMBS is the frictional material. A good frictional
material is to possess the following properties;
• High and reproducible coefficient of friction
• Imperviousness to environmental conditions
• Ability to withstand high temperature (thermal stability)
• High wear resistance
• Flexible and conformability to any surface

3.2 Electromagnet

Electromagnet is a type of magnet which follows Faraday’s law for producing mag-
netic field. When current flows through a wire a magnetic field is created around the
wire. In order to concentrate this magnetic field, in an electromagnet the wire is
wound into a coil with many turns of wire side by side. Hence the magnetic field
produced by all the turns of wire after passing through center of the coil, creates a
strong magnetic field. Right hand thumb rule is used to find the direction of magnetic
field. The advantage of using Electromagnet instead of permanent magnet is that
 12

magnetic field of an electromagnet can be easily varied by controlling the amount of

current.

ECB EMBS

DIMENSIONS POLE DIA., D=60mm OUTER CORE

40mm*40mm
INNER CORE
25mm*25mm

POLE AREA, S 2.838*10-3 m2 9.75*10-4 m2

NO. OF TURNS, N 500 800

NO. OF MAGNETS 2 2
USED

DISTANCE BETWEEN 70mm —

DISC CENTRE AND
POLE CENTRE, R

3.3 MODELLING
A 3D CAD model of the braking system has been developed using Fusion 360. Ma-
terials are used as mentioned above. Electromagnets in both ECB and EMBS have
been connected at phase angle of 180⁰ [10]. This helps to avoid interference of each
other’s magnetic field. Extension spring have been connected at the back of both the
electromagnets of rectangular cross section and stiffness of spring can be deter-
mined as per the use. In ECB electromagnets are connected to only one side of the
disc following the experimentation done by Sarath G [11], alternately a soft iron core
with same number of turns and pole area can also be used. Using permanent mag-
nets has been avoided as the design requirement for permanent magnets is very
complex and it is almost impossible to turn the braking torque off in any arrangement
of permanent magnets. Electromagnets provide flexibility of changing braking torque
as per our requirement just by adjusting small parameters like resistance and current.
 13

Fig.6 3D CAD Model

Fig.7 Arrangement of Disc and magnets

Both the disc are concentrically attached to each other and fins have been made for
stainless steel disc to facilitate heat flow from the disc. There is not much heating in
case of ECB so cooling is done through forced convection. Heat analysis of the Stain-
less steel has been done:

Fig.8 Temperature Change Analysis Fig.9 Heat Flux Analysis

 14

4.Result and Discussion

The working of the hybrid braking system has been proved mathematically and its
modeling and analysis has been done. The governing of the braking system can be
done through use of external control unit and sensors. EMBS can also be used during
panic braking or above the critical speed of ECB this ensures safety and reliability of
braking system but the main task of EMBS in this hybrid braking system is to provide
holding torque as well as braking torque at certain low speed regions. The speed
region where the EMBS should be activated also varies according to the configura-
tion of Electromagnets and motor used.
Another big advantage of this system as it can be used very efficiently as ABS by
adjusting the braking torque of ECB by varying the current. For this purpose, a Sliding
mode controller can be used to set a slip ratio and governing of ABS. Various people
like Lee and Park [5], Ren he [4] and snorre [12] have researched the use of sliding
mode controller but that’s out of scope of this paper.

5. Conclusion
The main objective of this project was to develop a braking system so that the
current braking system limitations can be overcome. A model of hybrid EEC brak-
ing system was Established. This is an Eco-friendly system (Environmental pollu-
tion none) and requires low maintenance. It has quicker response time compared
to Hydraulic Brakes. Can be used anywhere where deceleration of an object is
required, electromagnets can be chosen accordingly. It is highly effective and re-
liable. One limitation is that it is highly dependent on battery.

This brake can be used as an alternative to conventional brakes and existing hy-
brid brake models.
 15

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[2] O. Uexkull, S. Skerfving, R. Doyle, M. Braungart. 2005. Carbide Antimony in brake

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 16

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