Design and Optimization of an Axial Flux Permanent Magnet Assisted Eddy Current Brake

In this paper, design method of an axial gap permanent magnet (PM) assisted eddy-current brake is proposed by magnetic circuit based modeling and particle swarm optimization. The magnets in the investigated brake topology are placed into slot openings of the structure so as to increase the braking torque. This differs the design from conventional magnet-free brake structures. The proposed brake is modeled by a reluctance based network and Newton-Raphson approach is used as nonlinear solver. A multiobjective particle swarm optimization is created and used in the design case, which aims to have 28 Nm of braking torque. The optimized model is obtained by nondominating results in three-dimensional Pareto surfaces and analytical results are compared with finite element analyses. The results obtained from the analytical approach and the FEA agree well and it is shown that the investigated design methodology is an effective and fast approach so as to obtain the optimized design parameters in such eddy current brake structures.