2472 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 2012
An Analytical 3-D Model for Calculating Eddy-Current Damping Force for
a Magnetic Levitation System With Permanent Magnet
Mehran Ebrahimian , Mohammad Khodabakhsh , and Golamreza Vossoughi
Center of Excellence in Design, Robotics and Automation, Mechanical Engineering Department, Sharif University of
Technology, Tehran, Iran
Physics Department, Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
Azadi street, Tehran 11365-9567, Iran
An analytical solution for obtaining steady-state eddy-current-based force on a levitated permanent magnet above a plate with linear
conductivity in the eld of an electromagnet having cylindrical symmetry is presented in this paper. In literature, the force due to eddy
current in this levitation system have been used for high precision positioning of a levitated permanent magnet without providing an
explicit analytical model. In this system, a change in the coils current and also the motion of the levitated permanent magnet in 3-D
space generate eddy current in the plate. A novel explicit solution for obtaining damping forces due to these eddy currents is obtained
as a function of geometric and material properties of the system. The analytical solution is derived by solving the quasi-static Maxwell
equations using separation of variables method. Comparisons show that the analytical solution closely matches with the results of the
nite element analysis.
Index TermsAnalytical solution, eddy current, eddy-current damping, magnetic levitation.
I. INTRODUCTION
E
DDY CURRENT has wide usage in some electrical
systems such as contactless manipulation [1], magnetic
bearing [2], [3], and nondestructive testing [4]. The contactless
manipulation systems manipulate an object in the absence of
frictional losses stemming from mechanical contacts.
Modeling the eddy current in different systems has al-
ready been investigated by using analytical and nite element
methods. In [5][7], eddy current in a conductive plate under
inuence of a eld source has been analyzed by numerical and
nite element methods.
Analytical models are developed to study the eddy-current
effects. In [8], an analytical model is presented for a thin con-
ductive plate exposed to a time-varying magnetic eld. In this
work, only magnetic elds in the direction perpendicular to the
plate can be modeled. This can be a limitation in most problems.
Also, an analytical model for obtaining eddy-current effects in a
conductive plate with a source eld above the plate is presented
in [9], [10]. In this work, the source magnetic eld is symmetric
in one of the directions parallel to plate and Maxwell equations
have been solved in 2-D space.
Magnetic levitation system is a contactless manipulation
system that uses the eddy currents in stable positioning of the
levitated object [11][13]. An important advantage of using the
eddy current in magnetic levitation systems is higher precision
positioning of the levitated object stemming from the resultant
damping forces [1], [14]. In [1], a semi-analytical model for
obtaining real time eddy-current damping forces when the
magnetic eld has a cylindrical symmetry is studied without
presenting an explicit analytical relation for damping forces.
Manuscript received January 18, 2012; revised March 23, 2012; accepted
March 29, 2012. Date of publication April 16, 2012; date of current version
August 21, 2012. Corresponding author: M. Khodabakhsh (e-mail: m_khod-
abakhsh@mech.sharif.edu).
Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMAG.2012.2194791
In this paper an analytical model for obtaining steady state
damping force on a permanent magnet, levitated in a eld of
electromagnet above a conductive plate is presented. So an ex-
plicit analytical relation for eddy forces is obtained as a function
of geometric and material properties of the system. The damping
force can be generated by changing electromagnets current and
also the motion of levitated object. The motion of permagnet
(permanent magnet) is studied in all directions in 3-D space.
The magnetic eld is considered to have cylindrical symmetry
which is reasonable in many applications.
In the presented analytical solution, quasi-static Maxwell
equations are solved by separation of variables method in each
region and the global solution is derived using boundary con-
ditions between the regions. In obtaining eddy forces the effect
of eddy current generated in the permagnet is ignored, because
the conductivity and size of the plate are much larger than
those of the permagnet. Also, the permagnet is modeled as a
magnetic dipole. By integration over magnetic dipole elements
to nd the force on a real permagnet, it is shown that the simple
magnetic dipole model has sufcient precision. By comparing
the results from this analytical solution with the results from
the nite element analysis, the analytical solution is validated.
II. DAMPING FORCE IN MAGNETIC LEVITATION SYSTEM
In Fig. 1, the schematic of the magnetic levitation system
is shown. An electromagnet, a levitated object which is a per-
magnet and a conductive plate are parts of this levitation system.
The levitated object can be moved in direction by exerting the
magnetic eld of the electromagnet, and in and directions
by moving the electromagnet.
The eddy-current-based force may be generated by the vari-
ation of the position of the levitated object which creates eddy
current in the conductive plate. This eddy current generates
a magnetic eld which opposes the motion of the permagnet
(Lenzs law). Also, the variation of the electromagnet current
generates eddy current in the plate which subsequently gener-
ates eddy force on the object. It is shown in the Appendix that
0018-9464/$31.00 2012 IEEE
EBRAHIMIAN et al.: ANALYTICAL 3-D MODEL FOR CALCULATING EDDY-CURRENT DAMPING FORCE 2473
Fig. 1. Schematic of the levitated object above the plate.
in the rst order of perturbation, the eddy current in the plate
is linearly proportional to the velocity of the levitated object
and the rate of change of current in the electromagnet. Because
our object is a permagnet, the eddy force is proportional to
eddy current in the plate. Hence, the eddy force is a linear
combination of objects velocity and rate of electromagnets
current change. Thus, we can obtain the eddy-current-based
force generated by each effect separately and obtain the total
eddy force by summing these two eddy forces coming from
different sources.
Also, to compute eddy forces the permagnet is considered as
a magnetic dipole. If the size of the permagnet is small with
respect to its distance from the plate, the analytical solution ob-
tained in this paper can be used approximately by assuming the
levitated object as a magnetic dipole placed right at its center.
Generally we can consider the levitated object as the sum of
magnetic dipoles at different coordinates and obtain the eddy
forces by integrating over these small magnetic dipole elements.
But this increases the complexities. By calculating these inte-
grals, it is seen that when , the distance between the center of
the object and conductive plate (see Fig. 1), is such that
and , the magnetic dipole approximation is valid with
5% relative error. In these equations is the objects diameter
and is its height. In most situations is in the above ranges,
so we can avoid these complexities in our calculations.
III. EDDY-CURRENT-BASED FORCE DUE TO THE MOTION OF
LEVITATED PERMAGNET
A. Introduction
In this section, an analytical solution is presented for ob-
taining eddy force due to the motion of the small permagnet.
If , the relative permeability of the plate, is larger than 1,
the plate will pull-in the levitated object toward itself, which is
undesirable. Also, it is shown that using a plate with high con-
ductivity produces a bigger eddy-current-based force. Hence, it
is better to use a high conductive plate (i.e., many of Aluminum
alloys) with a relative permeability of .
B. Systems Model
From the quasi-static Maxwells equations for linear conduc-
tors we have the following equation for magnetic vector poten-
tial in the conductive plate [15]
(1)
where is the magnetic vector potential, is the permeability
of free space, and is the conductivity of the plate.
In the nonconductive places the right side of this equation
vanishes. Using this equation and boundary conditions the mag-
netic vector potential can be obtained in order to nd the eddy
forces on the object.
First we analyze the motion of the permagnet in z direction.
According to Fig. 1, we write the position of the permagnet as
, where and are the initial position and
velocity of the permagnet, respectively.
It is known that a magnetic dipole with a moment is
equivalent to a coil with a small radius , and a large current
where . Hence, using this conversion we can make
this problem similar to the electromagnet based eddy-current
problem presented in the next section.
The space current density, , in the cylindrical coordinate is
(2)
where is Diracs delta function and is the angular unit vector
in cylindrical coordinate. By the Taylor series expansion around
the point , the current density can be written as
(3)
In the rst order of perturbation to nd nonzero eddy force,
the higher order terms of the series expansion can be neglected
because of the small permagnets velocity.
The rst term of (3) which is due to a static dipole cannot
generate eddy current, because it is not time dependent. Thus
for analyzing the eddy-current-based force only the second term
is necessary.
Since vector potentials and elds are linear functions of cur-
rent sources, a virtual current density, , can be dened as
(4)
Hence, the magnetic eld generated by is derivative of the
virtual elds, generated by , with respect to . Hence, we
must rst derive the magnetic elds due to current density .
This current density is obtained from a coil with radius posi-
tioned at a distance (in parallel to the conductive plate) car-
rying a current .
2474 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012
We can write this time dependent current as the sum of har-
monic currents with amplitude in different angular fre-
quencies using Fourier transform below
(5)
One can write
(6)
The derivation of the magnetic vector potential with respect
to this harmonic current is shown in the Appendix. Thus, the am-
plitude of vector potential in angular frequency can be written
as
(7)
where is the rst-order of the rst-kind Bessel function and
quantities and are dened in (47) and (48) of Appendix.
The second term of (7) is the vector potential due to the direct
effect of the coil current (see (48)) which is independent of
and . Also, the rst term, which decreases by increasing , is
the vector potential due to eddy current in the plate (see (47)).
Hence, to obtain the eddy force of the plate on the permagnet,
only the rst term should be considered.
Taking inverse Fourier transform and differentiating with re-
spect to and limiting the coil radius to zero (in the magnet
dipole limit) lead to an equation for magnetic vector potential
in the following form:
(8)
To obtain the eddy-current-based force we have [15]
(9)
Substituting into (9) and using (8), the
eddy-current force due to the permagnets motion can be written
as
(10)
where is
(11)
Equation (10) represents the eddy force due to the motion of
the permagnet perpendicular to the plate. This idea can be used
to nd the eddy force due to the motion of permagnet parallel
to the plate by replacing by , in (8). Hence,
we have
(12)
where is
(13)
Fig. 2. Component of of eddy-current density A/m in the plate due to the
motion of the levitated object resulted from nite element method.
It is seen that the damping coefcient for radial direction is
half of the damping coefcient for axial direction.
C. Results
In this section, we validate the analytical solution obtained in
the last section. The results are validated with the numerical re-
sults obtained fromnite element method. In obtaining the nite
element method results, the Mesh size of each subdomain has
been rened to get more accurate data. We have used COMSOL
Multiphysics software version 4.1 with a free triangular mesh.
The number of the elements is about 100 000 and the number of
DOF is about 200 000 in our simulation. In Fig. 2, a symmetric
diagram of the eddy-current density due to the motion of the
permagnet with A m and upward velocity of
mm/s is shown. The plate with the thickness of 5 mm has the
conductivity of m . Also, the distance between
the permagnet and the plate is 10 mm.
According to Fig. 2, the maximum value of the current den-
sity is generated 5 mm away from the center of the plate. The
eddy-current density vanishes after 5 cm from the center of the
plate. Therefore, the plates with a radius larger than 5 cm can be
considered as innite plates in and directions and the calcu-
lations are valid for these plates.
Figs. 3 and 4 show , the damping coefcient in direc-
tion [see (11)], as a function of and . In all of these gures,
the plate conductivity is set to be 30 m .
These gures show the precision of our results and can be
considered as a validation for our solution. The error of analyt-
ical results with respect to the nite element method (FEM) re-
sults is less than 3%. Also, from (11) it is seen that by increasing
increases until it reaches to a maximumvalue which
is proportional to ; this effect can be seen in Fig. 4. Equation
(11) indicates that the damping coefcient for is greater
than 85% of its value for semi-innite plate . So
a plate with a thickness of the order of the permagnet distance
can be a good choice for practical considerations.
EBRAHIMIAN et al.: ANALYTICAL 3-D MODEL FOR CALCULATING EDDY-CURRENT DAMPING FORCE 2475
Fig. 3. The damping coefcient in (11), as a function of the permagnet height
from the plate. The plate thickness is assumed to be 1 cm.
Fig. 4. The damping coefcient in (11), as a function of plate thickness. The
distance between permagnet and plate is assumed to be 1 cm.
IV. EDDY-CURRENT-BASED FORCE DUE TO CHANGE OF
ELECTROMAGNET CURRENT
A. Eddy-Current-Based Force Due to Change of Coil Current
In this section, the goal is to obtain an analytical model of
eddy-current-based force due to change of electromagnet cur-
rent. An electromagnet consists of many coils and cores. If we
solve the problem for one coil, we can solve the problem for a
complex electromagnet by summing the effect of each coil.
The geometry of problem is shown in Fig. 5.
The coil current is and is a function of time. To nd nonzero
eddy force in the rst order of perturbation, we use Taylor series
expansion about the initial time value and disregard the higher
order terms:
(14)
Using Fourier transform, we can write this current as sum
of harmonic currents with amplitude in different angular
frequencies:
(15)
Fig. 5. Position of the coil and permagnet with respect to plate.
, the amplitude of magnetic vector potential has
been obtained in the Appendix as
(16)
where quantities and are dened in the Appendix [see
(47) and (48)].
The second term of (16) is the vector potential due to the di-
rect effect of the coil current [see (48)]. Also, the rst term is the
vector potential due to the eddy current of the plate. Therefore,
to obtain the eddy force, only the rst term should be consid-
ered. The eddy force on the object is obtained from (9) and is
written in the following form in two directions of and :
(17)
(18)
where and are
(19)
(20)
where index in refers to electromagnet-based eddy
force.
Since increasing the distance from the symmetry axis results
in a considerable reduction of the magnetic eld, for effective
damping in the radial direction, , the distance of the object
from the symmetry axis, should be small compared to and .
Therefore, we can replace the zero order of the rst-kind Bessel
function by its Taylor series to obtain the rst nonzero term of
eddy force in each direction as follows:
(21)
2476 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012
Fig. 6. The damping coefcient in (22), as a function of the permagnet height
from the plate. The coil radius is 2.5 cm and the plate thickness is 1 cm.
Hence, the integrals can be written as Laplace transform of
rst-kind Bessel function and can be solved analytically as
(22)
where and
(23)
Also, at small distances , the second termof (16) which leads
to the direct magnetic force on the permagnet, , is ob-
tained as follows:
(24)
B. Results
In this section, we are going to validate the analytical solu-
tion obtained in the last section. The results are compared with
the numerical results obtained from the nite element method.
In obtaining the nite element method results, the Mesh size
of each subdomain has been rened until the results converge.
Figs. 6, 7, and 8 show , the damping coefcient in the
direction in (22), as a function of and . In all of these
gures, the plate conductivity is set to be 40 m and the
distance between the plate and the coil is set to be 10 cm. Also,
is in SI units.
Precision of the analytical results has been shown in compar-
ison with nite element method results. The error of analytical
results is less than 4%. Since we have only considered the ef-
fect of one coil, has an insignicant value (about ).
But for an electromagnet with a large number of coils and iron
cores, the amount of is in the order of milli-Newton.
This amount is in the order of for a dipole with ve-
locity 1 cm/s in direction (see Fig. 3).
Fig. 7. The damping coefcient in (22), as a function of coil radius. The per-
magnet height from the plate is 5 cm and the plate thickness is 1 cm.
Fig. 8. The damping coefcient in (22), as a function of plate thickness. The
permagnet height from the plate is 5 cm and the coil radius is 2.5 cm.
C. Eddy-Current-Based Force Due to Change of Current for a
Complex Electromagnetic System
Since the motive force in the levitation system is produced
by several electromagnets in different positions, the modeling
of such systems can be complex. As a solution, we present a
method which states that by using the coil model stated in the
previous section, any electromagnet can be modeled. To this
end, (24) from the previous section can be written as
(25)
where is
(26)
It is seen that is only a function of coil parameters and
does not depend on plate parameters.
EBRAHIMIAN et al.: ANALYTICAL 3-D MODEL FOR CALCULATING EDDY-CURRENT DAMPING FORCE 2477
Thus, having the direct electromagnet force acting on the per-
magnet from experimental data or electromagnet catalog, by
using inverse Laplace transform from (25), can be ob-
tained as follows:
(27)
where . Notice that is the distance of permagnet
from the plate. Also, from (19) and (26) for small we have
(28)
Substituting (27) into the (28), the following relation can be
obtained:
(29)
Also, substituting (29) in (23) a similar equation can be ob-
tained for .
In the presented model, parameter has not been deter-
mined. It can be obtained from the geometrical properties of
the electromagnet. Notice that in this model we compare the
magnetic eld of the electromagnet with the eld of a coil.
Since the magnitude of the eld of a coil is maximum in its
center at a distance of from the plate, and considering the
fact that the magnetic eld due to the magnetic eld generation
system has got a maximum point (vs. distance from the plate),
the distance between the plate and the point with maximum
magnetic eld generated by the electromagnet can be used
as an approximation for . In most cases, the geometry of
electromagnet is symmetric, so the maximum value of the
magnetic eld is in the center of the electromagnet.
Thus, the eddy force due to the change of electromagnets cur-
rent for a complex electromagnet can be obtained using this ap-
proximate method. To obtain an exact relation for the damping
coefcient we can decompose the electromagnet into parts with
distance fromthe plate and calculate the damping coefcient
of each part, , then nd the total damping coefcient by sum-
ming them.
V. CONCLUSION
An explicit analytical solution has been presented to calcu-
late eddy-current-based forces due to the motion of the per-
manent magnet and the change of the electromagnet current in
the magnetic levitation systems described above. The perma-
nent magnet has been modeled as a magnetic dipole; it has been
shown that this model has a maximum error of 5% in a wide
range of workspace. Close results of the analytical solution and
FEM modeling validates the analytical solution.
These analytical relations can be used to calculate the eddy
force in modeling some electrical systems. The amount of eddy
force near the plate is large enough to act as a damping force on
the levitated object, and it can be useful in position control of
the levitated object with high precision.
APPENDIX
In this section, we want to obtain the vector potential due to a
coil with radius and in a height from the plate with current
.
Since the current source in the space is harmonic function of
time with angular frequency , considering space symmetry, we
can write
(30)
where index is the number of regions. The space under the
plate is region 1, inside the plate is region 2, the space between
the upper surface of the plate and the plan is region 3,
and above this plane is region 4. Using (1) and (30), we have
(31)
(32)
where in (1) is replaced by .
Using separation of variables method and Bessel transform,
the following results for the four regions are obtained:
(33)
(34)
(35)
(36)
where is the rst order of the rst-kind Bessel functions and
.
and can be obtained according to boundary condi-
tions in the boundary surfaces between different regions. Thus,
six equations are obtained that can be written as
(37)
(38)
(39)
(40)
(41)
(42)
where is
(43)
2478 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 48, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2012
Solving (37) through (43), the following results are obtained:
(44)
(45)
Therefore, having a coil with radius and in a height from
the plate with current , the vector potential in the
region 3 will be in the form of
(46)
where and are obtained as follows:
(47)
(48)
and is
(49)
where .
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to gratefully thank M. Abedinnasab
for his help on the nite-element analysis in the sabbatical pe-
riod in Nanyang Technological University.
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