Normalized Force-Speed Curves of Eddy Current Brakes with Ferromagnetic Loss Drums

The paper presents a set of normalized force-speed curves of a salient pole eddy current brake with Prohlich B-H characteristic for the loss drum, taking the air-gap flux distortion into account. With reasonable assumptions, the calculation of eddy current distribution in the loss drum can be simplified to the solution of a 1-dimensional nonlinear diffusion equation with an implicit boundary condition. This equation is normalized and solved numerically by a stable iterative scheme. The normalized curves are used to predict the performance of an experimental machine and can be used in the design of similar devices.