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Design Considerations of Electromagnetic Brakes for Servo Applications

Conference Paper · June 2014

DOI: 10.1109/ISIE.2014.6864709

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 Design Considerations of Electromagnetic
Brakes for Servo Applications
Yusuf Yasa(*), Eyyup Sincar(**), Baris Tugrul Ertugrul(**), Erkan Mese(*)
(*) Yildiz Technical University, Electrical Engineering Department, Istanbul, Turkey
(**) ASELSAN Inc, Ankara, Turkey
yasa@yildiz.edu.tr, esincar@aselsan.com.tr, bertugrul@aselsan.com.tr, emese@yildiz.edu.tr

ζΦAbstract – Servo motors have increased popularity in
industrial and robotics applications. Also, servo motors employ
electromagnetic brakes for holding and emergency braking. So,
electromechanical brakes found numerous fields due to operation
and emergency requirements. The design procedure of an
electromagnetic brake requires multidisciplinary approach in
terms of mechanical, electrical and thermal aspects. This paper
focuses on design, development and experimental verification of
an electromagnetic brake. The electromagnetic and thermal
design is handled in both FEA and analytical models.
Electromagnetic brake prototype is produced and design aspects
are experimentally verified. Good agreement between the test
results and the prototype is achieved.
Index Terms—Electromagnetic brake, Electromagnetic DC
disk brake, Brake, Electromechanical brake, Servo motor brake,
Servo applications.
state performance. Experimental results are given in Section IV.
DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS
In electromagnetic brake design process, three aspects will be
taken into account; mechanical, electromagnetic and thermal.
These three aspects are very critical for performance and must be
carefully managed. The main goal of this paper is to present each
discipline’s effect on an electromagnetic brake design.
Brake Components and Their Functions
In order to understand operation principle of an electromagnetic
brake, it is useful to look at exploded picture. Electromagnetic
brake components are shown in Fig. 1. Each component’s
description is given in Table 1.

INTRODUCTION

E lectromagnetic brakes are commonly used in many

industrial and robotics applications with the increased
popularity of servo motors. Over the last two decades, some
application examples are printing machinery, textile industry,
military applications, robotics, medical, cranes, forklifts and so Fig. 1 Generic exploded scheme of brake components.
on.
In literature, there are few studies have been done for TABLE 1 LIST OF BRAKE COMPONENTS.
electromagnetic brake behavior and their design issues. They are Component Number Description of Components
1 Flange
summarized as follows. Electromagnetic DC disk brake modeling
2 Screw
requires multidisciplinary approach. The problem consists of 3 Adjust nut
electromagnetic, mechanics and thermal phenomena. Early 4 Lining and Friction disc
attempts to model these features of a brake were documented in 5 Brake boss
6 Armature
[1]. Electromagnetic modeling of a brake resembles to a solenoid.
7 Coil
There are many studies in the literature to model solenoids. In [2], 8 Spring
time lag of magnetic flux in the core by considering skin effect 9 Housing
and transient magnetization process near the air gap were
modeled. In [3], eddy current effect is considered during modeling Housing, armature and coil are used to generate magnetic field
in air gap to move armature from maximum-air gap to zero-air
the brake. Eddy current consideration plays an important role
gap state. In power off state, springs maintain maximum airgap by
while adapting solenoid model into the brake model since Eddy
pushing the armature out. When the coil is energized,
current yields significant thermal consequence in the brake electromagnetic flux generates magnetic force. When the resulting
behavior. In [4], authors combined earlier knowledge about magnetic force exceeds total spring force then armature will start
solenoid model to come up with a precise brake model. The model to move and airgap length will start to decrease. Lining provides
was simplified by magnetic circuit approach while adequate friction for braking. Adjust nut is used to provide desired airgap
accuracy was achieved. length between housing and armature.
This paper is organized as follows: Section II discusses the
electromagnetic brake design considerations in terms of
mechanical, electromagnetic and thermal aspects. In Section III,
optimization is performed to obtain desired transient and steady

This work is sponsored by ASELSAN Inc.

978-1-4799-2399-1/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 768

A. Mechanical Aspects
1) Torque
Springs generate axial force and this force is applied to the
lining (Fig. 2). On the other hand, servo motor coupled with the
brake provides rotational motion. System dynamics with and
without spring are illustrated in Fig. 3(a) and Fig. 3(b),
respectively.
Friction occurs on contact surfaces [5]. The friction (klining)
coefficient can be calculated from the force that is required to
slide a block over a plane and then dividing it by the weight of the
block.
Fig. 4 relationship between torque and force (a) and compressed spring force
representation (b).

Fig. 2 Torque generation in brake.
(a)
Fig. 3 Simplified mechanical system dynamics of brake (a) without spring and
(b) with spring.
Ffriction = klining .N
Ffriction = klining ( M .g + Fspring )
2) Material Selection
The material selection is an important step for designing an
electromagnetic brake. The selection criteria vary depending on
the application. Corrosion, machining, price, availability, strength
would be taken into consideration. In terms of performance, first
consideration is always electromagnetic characteristics of the
material. Plain carbon steels are mostly utilized for
electromechanical units such as relays, solenoids and brakes due
to their electromagnetic and machining characteristics [6]. The
(b) magnetic characteristics for low carbon steels are given in Table
2.
TABLE 2 MAGNETIC CHARACTERISTIC FOR LOW CARBON STEELS[7].
(1)
(2)

According to the brake position in Fig. 2, total force is the

summation of spring force and mass of armature. Due to light
mass of armature, Fspring>>M.g, M.g can be disregarded.

Ffriction ≈ klining .Fspring (3) 1:Saturation flux density is defined according to the relative magnetic permeability:
μsat=0.01*μmax
For rotating system, force is replaced with torque which must 2
: Magnetic field intensity at the point of maximum magnetic permeability
equal to the minimum static torque capacity.
The primary concern about the magnetic characteristics is
T friction ≈ klining .Tspring (4) saturation flux density and relative permeability. As it is seen in
Table 2, 1006 steel and 1117 steel are the most proper materials in
Braking performance reduces with increase in temperature terms of electromagnetic performance.
because of the decrease in friction coefficient of lining. More
details can be found in [5]. In mechanical design process, safety Electromagnetic Aspects
factor should be considered. For this application, it is selected 1.3. 3) Finite Element Analysis of Brake
The relationship between applied torque to the armature and
spring force are shown in Fig. 4(a). In the previous section, critical geometrical parameters are
determined based on the mechanical aspects of the brake.
Tspring = Fspring .d (5) Electromagnetic design is handled in this section.
d is effective radius of lining which can be calculated with (6). To shorten finite element analysis (FEA) time, only housing,
armature and coil are considered because other parameters do not
1 (d o 3 − di 3 ) have significant effect on electromagnetic behavior. Finite
d= (6)
3 (d o 2 − di 2 ) element analysis is performed through Ansoft-Maxwell 3D
software. FEA model is illustrated in Fig. 5.
do:Outer diameter of friction disc.
di:Inner diameter of friction disc. In FEA, air gap length and number of ampere-turn in coil are the
most important parameter for the brake performance. So the FEA
With (5), spring force is calculated then number of spring and is conducted with parametrical simulations and the results are
amount of spring compression can be decided using (7). given in Fig. 6 and Fig. 7 in terms of flux linkage and induced
Fspring = N spring .kspring .( x) (7) magnetic force, respectively. Effect of airgap can be seen from
different curves in Fig. 6. Since minimum reluctance is achieved
N: Number of spring in brake. in no airgap condition the total generated flux is at maximum as
kspring: Spring constant(N/mm).
x: Spring compression (mm). expected. With increase in air gap, total generated flux in brake

769
decreases because of the rising reluctance which consists of airgap
reluctance and steel reluctance. Steel reluctance is discarded when
it is compared to airgap reluctance.

(a)
Flange
Lining
Rotor

Airgap

Stator

(b)
Fig. 8 The change of armature position (a) power-on case and (b) power-off
case.

Fig. 5 Finite element electromagnetic model of brake.

Maximum and minimum air gap positions can be seen from

Fig. 8. Magnetic saturation has to take into account for high
ampere-turn and low air gap length conditions. Fig. 9 and Fig. 10
show the magnetic field distribution of housing and armature,
respectively. Especially inner side of housing and armature are
becoming magnetically saturated with around 2 Tesla at this
condition. This is a saturation limit value for most of the magnetic
materials in industry and it is not suggested to go further. As a
result, steady state operation should be designed at lower than 2
Tesla. Fig. 9 The distribution of magnetic field density in housing of brake.
0.8

0.7

0.6
Flux linkage (wb)

0.5
g=0 mm
0.4 g=0.05 mm
g=0.1 mm
0.3 g=0.15 mm
g=0.2 mm
0.2 g=0.25 mm
0.1

0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800
NI (Amper-turn) Fig. 10 The distribution of magnetic field density in armature of brake.

Fig. 6 The variation of flux linkage with obtained FEA parametric study. 4) Analytical Model of Brake
1.8
Analytical model is obtained in order to realize the time-
1.6
domain electrical performance of the brake. Flow chart of
1.4 analytical model is shown in Fig. 11 where i = f (λ , g ) and
Magnetic Force (kN)

1.2 Fmag = f (i, g ) functions are obtained from 3D FEA by utilizing

1 parametrical results of air gap length and current values. The
0.8 algorithm calculates intermediate values between curves by
g=0 mm interpolation technique. As a result, mechanical dynamic equation
0.6
g=0.05 mm gives us the new position of the armature. The updated air gap
0.4 g=0.1 mm length and current values are used for the next loop. The
g=0.15 mm
0.2 g=0.2 mm
procedure repeats in each time interval.
0 g=0.25 mm Fig. 12 shows the results of analytical model. The spring force
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 and magnetic force variation can be seen from Fig. 12(a). At the
NI (Amper-turn)
beginning of the simulation, 24 VDC is applied to the terminals
Fig. 7 The variation of flux linkage with obtained FEA parametric study. where the initial magnetic field is zero. Then magnetic force
climbs with increasing current and flux. The spring force value in

770
the graph shows the value calculated by equation (8). Current Thermal Aspects
variation is shown in Fig. 12(b). When the magnetic force exceeds 5) Thermal Limits
the spring force then the armature starts to move and air gap In industrial product design process, realizing the thermal
length starts to decrease as shown in Fig. 12(c). features of each component is very critical. Generally, insulation
At 0.25 sec, the applied voltage becomes zero. Thus the current class determines the thermal limits. Table 3 shows the enamel
starts to decrease and the magnetic field also starts to decrease. classes and their temperature indexes.
When the magnetic force equals to the spring force, air gap length TABLE 3 MAX. ALOWABLE TEMPERATURES OF VARIOUS TYPES OF
would start to increase. INSULATION [8].
Insulation Max.
Class permissible
temperature(°C)
Y 90 °C
λ = ∫ (V − Ri )dt i = f (λ , g ) Fmag = f (i, g )
A 105 °C
E 120 °C
B 130 °C
F 155 °C
Fmag − Fspring = mrotor
dg 2
dt
H 180 °C
C Over 180 °C
Fig. 11 Basic flow chart of analytical model of brake.
1800
Fmagnetic
6) Finite Element Model of Brake
1600 Fspring
Brake thermal behavior is investigated through Comsol 3D
1400
FEA software considering brake losses. Material properties and
1200
analysis specifications are listed in Table 4 [9] ,[10], [11].
Force(N)

1000
TABLE 4 FINITE ELEMENT THERMAL SIMULATION PARAMETERS.
800
Material Thermal Density Heat
600
Conductivity ρ (kg/m3) Capacity
400
k(W/(m.K)) Cp
200
(J/(kg.K))
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3
Time(s)
0.4 0.5 Epoxy Resin 0.2 2250 1150
(a)
Steel 17 7600 466
Air 0.025 1.225 1013
1
Copper 403 8700 385
0.9

0.8
Boundary Conditions
0.7
h 17.5 W/(m2K)
0.6
Tair 293 K (20 °C)
Current (A)

0.5

0.4 FEA results are shown in Fig. 13. The hottest component of
0.3 brake is copper and which is around 125 °C whereas the brake
0.2 surface is around 90 °C on inner side. The validation is provided
0.1 in the experimental results section.
0
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time (s)

(b)

N=620

0.2
Airgap Length (mm)

0.15

0.1

0.05

-0.05
0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5
Time(s) (a)
(c)
Fig. 12 The variation of analytical model results: Magnetic force and spring
force (a), current (b) and air gap length (c).

771

(b)
Fig. 13 3D FEA brake thermal (a) surface and (b) inner results.
7) Thermal Analytical Model of Brake
Thermal analytical model is created with the followings. Fig. 14
shows the cross section of the brake. It has an inner hollow
cylindrical shape with radius r1. The outer of the brake radius is
represented by r4. The windings are encircled around the inner
cylinder. The inner and outer cylinders are enclosed by a cover
with the same material properties as the cylinders.
Fig. 14 Cross section of the housing in brake.
It is aimed to determine maximum temperature of the surface of
the brake Ts at the steady-state condition under the assumptions of
• Constant properties
• The heat transfer between the brake and surrounding is due to
only convection and radiation
• Steady-state one dimensional heat exchange through each
surface of the brake
• The radiation exchange between the skin surface and the
surroundings is between a small surface and a large enclosure
at the air temperature.
The surface temperature may be obtained by performing an
energy balance at the surface of the brake.
Eg − Eout = 0
(8)
where Eg is the thermal energy generation due to ohmic heating by
the electrical resistance of the windings and Eout is the thermal
energy outflow due to convection and radiation from the surface.
V2
Eg = I 2 R = (9)
R
772
Eout = Econ + Erad = A.h.(Ts − Ta ) + A.ε .σ (Ts 4 − Ta 4 ) (10)
Inserting the (9) and (10) into (8), the surface temperature may be
obtained by an algebraic equation of the form
V2
A.h.(Ts − Ta ) + A.ε .σ (Ts 4 − Ta 4 ) = (11)
R
where
A: Area of the brake opening to ambient = 0.013 m2
h: Convection heat transfer coefficient, 17.5 W/m2.K
Ta: Ambient temperature, 20 °C
ε: Emissivity of the surface constant, 0.8
σ: Stefan-Boltzman constant, 5.67x10-8
V: DC voltage applied at terminal of windings, 24 VDC
R: Resistance of windings, 32.69 Ohm
When the (11) is solved for surface temperature, one gets Ts as 96
°C. For fixed environmental conditions (h, Ta), as well as for fixed
brake geometries and properties (ε, R), the steady-state surface
temperature depends on the thermal energy generation and hence
on the value of applied voltage V. Using foregoing equations, the
surface temperature was computed for applied voltage in range of 0
≤V≤ 32 and the following results were obtained (Fig. 15).
160
140
120
100
T (°C)
80
s
60
40
20
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
V (volts)
Fig. 15 The surface temperature Ts vs the applied voltage V.
If a maximum operating temperature of T=155 °C is prescribed for
safety reasons, the applied voltage should not exceeds 32 VDC. At
this temperature, heat transfer by radiation (0.6 W) is much less
that heat transfer by convection (17.2 W). Hence, one can ignore
the heat removal from the brake due to radiation.
OPTIMIZATION
The brake under investigation is an integral part of a servo
motor. The most important requirement for servo applications is
system dynamic response time. Component with the lowest
dynamic response determines the system response time.
Essentially this suggests that brake response time should be
minimized by optimizing certain parameters in brake design.
Optimization is started with coil number of turns and suitable
conductor radius. Algorithm is developed to calculate conductor
radius with changing number of turns. It is required because the
volume of conductor slot is constant and limited. The other limit
for optimization is required minimum operation voltage. This
value is chosen as 17 VDC which is desired minimum level for
most industrial battery sourced applications.
During power-on case, different numbers of turn (N) that are fit
into the limited volume in housing are analyzed in analytical
model then the generated magnetic force results are shown in Fig.
16(a). In N=820 and 860 case, the generated magnetic force does
not reach spring force, so brake cannot be operated with them.
During power-off case, 0 VDC is applied to the terminals of brake
at 0.25 sec and consequently magnetic force starts to decrease as
shown in Fig. 16(b).
600

500

Fig. 17 Prototype of brake.

400
Force (N)

300 N=620 8) Mechanical Test

N=660
N=700 In experimental study, first step is to measure brake’s static
N=740
200
N=780 torque in power-off case. In mechanical aspects section, the
N=820
N=860
reference static torque is designed to get 9.1 Nm. The brake static
100 Spring torque is measured with torque wrench. The measurement result
for static torque value is 9.5 Nm which is quite close to design
0
0 0.01 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.09 0.1 value.
Time (s)
9) Electrical Test
(a)
In experimental study, dynamic behavior of brake is tested. As
1500
mentioned before, for high dynamic response of brake, the
N=620 optimum point is reached with optimizing number of turn in
N=660
N=700 brake. For testing, 17VDC voltage is applied to the brake
1000 N=740 terminals. Then current is measured with oscilloscope. As given
N=780
N=820 before in Fig. 12, at the time of first peak point of current, the
Force (N)

N=860
Spring
magnetic force reaches the brake’s total spring force. At that time
air gap length also starts to decrease in power-on case and starts to
500
increase in power-off case. The results are shown in Fig. 18.
Results show that analytical model gives reasonable estimation for
the brake current.
0.6
0

0.25 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5

Time (s)
(b) 0.4
24 Analytical Model
Measured
Current (A)

0.3

22
0.2

20 0.1
Loss

0
18
P

-0.1
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16
16 Time (s)
(a)
0.6
14 Analytical Model
Measured
0.5

12
650 700 750 800 850
Number of Turn 0.4

(c)
Fig. 16 The variation of magnetic force and spring force in power-on case(a), 0.3
Current(A)

power-off case(b), Power loss at 24VDC with various number of turn(c).

0.2

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY 0.1

So far, mechanical parameters are defined then analytical model

0
and finite element model for electrical and thermal behavior
predictions are built. Then optimization of some parameters is -0.1
0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1 0.12 0.14 0.16 0.18
performed. Prototype is built as pictured in Time (s)
(b)
Fig. 17. Fig. 18 The variation of measured current and its analytical model result with
17VDC terminal voltage at room temperature case in power-on(a) and power-
off(b) case.

773
 It is noteworthy that in analytical model there is only one dip in
current waveform. But in measured data, there are two dips in
current. This is related with parallelism in armature because of the
production fault tolerance. This problem usually arises from
different coefficient of springs as shown in Fig. 19.
Fig. 19 Armature imbalance because of the different spring constant.
10) Thermal Test
Thermal study is done by applying 24 VDC nominal voltage
then dynamic and steady-state behaviors are investigated. For
measuring the coil temperature, thermistor is located in the middle
of the coil which is considered as the hottest point in the brake.
The time-dependent dynamic behavior is shown in Fig. 20. The
surface of the brake in steady state is shown in Fig. 24
140
120
Temperature (Celcius)
model results are validated with experimental study. Results show
that there is good agreement in both electrical and thermal results
between analytical and experimental studies.
REFERENCES
[1] Richard Shemanske, "Electronic Motor Braking," IEEE Trans. On Industry
Applications, vol. IA-19, pp. 824-831, Apr. 1983.
[2] S. Yamada, Y. Kanamaru and K. Bessho, "The Transient Magnetization
Process and Operations in the Plunger Type Electromagnet," IEEE Trans. On
Magnetics, Vol. MAG-12, 1976.
[3] Bruno Lequesne, "Dynamic Model of Selenoids Under Impact Excitation,
Including Motion and Eddy Currents," IEEE Trans. On Magnetics, Vol. 26,
1990.
[4] Timo T. Vekara, Jarl-Thure Eriksson and Juha T. Tanttu, "Dynamic Model of
an Electromagnetic Massive Core Brake Actuator," IEEE Trans. On
Magnetics, Vol. 32, 1996.
[5] Chris Johanson, Auto Brakes, vol. I. Illinois: The Goodheart-Willcox
Company, Inc, 2008, p. 180.
[6] Standard DIN EN 10087: Free-cutting steels - Technical delivery conditions
for semi-finished products, hot-rolled bars and rods
[7] Finite Element Method Magnetics software (FEMM 4.0) materials library.
[8] Shimizu Ohta "Temperature Classes of Electrical Insulators," Technical
News, ThreeBond, Issued December 1, 1985.
[9] Farnell, "Technical Data Sheet," [Online]. Available:
http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/316696.pdf
[10] UL IDES, "Epoxy Typical Proporties Generic Epoxy," [Online]. Available:
http://plastics.ides.com/generics/13/c/t/epoxy-epoxy-properties-processing"

100 [11] National Physical Laboratory, "Tables of Physical & Chemical Constants,"
[Online].Available:
80 http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/2_3/2_3_6.html.

60

40

20
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Time (s)

Fig. 20 Thermal behavior of coil in brake for 24VDC.

Fig. 21 Temperature distribution of brake at steady-state condition.

The FEA results are validated with the given thermal results. They
are consistent with each other very well. Coil temperature is
measured 125 °C that is calculated 125 °C in 3D FEA. Beside,
brake surface measure 91 °C which is calculated 90 °C in 3D FEA
whereas the surface is calculated 96 °C in analytical mode. The
results show that the epoxy resin and insulation material must be
at least in F class insulation.
CONCLUSION
The paper discusses the design considerations of electromagnetic
brake which is commonly used in many industrial and robotics
applications. Design process of electromagnetic brake is achieved
with considering mechanical, electrical and thermal aspects. The
analytical model and FEA model are obtained. The analytical

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