Enhancement of Regenerative Power Utilization for Electric Vehicle by Using Eddy Current Brake

Electric vehicle's (EV) performance has been enhanced to solve the energy depletion and environmental problems. The EV mechanical brake system utilizes friction energy of the rotating wheels into heat which is dissipated by the mechanical parts of the braking system and that causes an increment of the temperature and wearing of these parts which may affect the reliability of the braking system. To eliminate or reduce the frequent using of mechanical brake, a regenerative braking energy is fed from the driver motor back as a charging current into the battery during the braking state. In case of the battery is already fully charged the regenerative energy is useless and dissipated in a resistive load as heat. In this paper a simulation model in MATLAB/Simulink is designed for the application of DC motor in an EV in a regenerative mode to feed an eddy current brake (ECB) system in case of a fully charged battery. The advantage of using ECB system is studied in terms of improvement of performance of EV and braking efficiency. The results show that the ECB is effective in stopping the proposed model of the EV.