Customer Reviews

Magnetic Actuators and Sensors

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

According to the preface, this book is suitable for upper-level engineering undergraduates. But from its content, I would say it suits a very general introductory course on magnetic actuators and sensors and doesn't go into the details, which is really sad. The first 50 pages give some vague pieces of theory. The remainder of the book is a presentation of basic finite-elements calculations performed with Maxwell. I expected some analytical formulas showing the behaviour of sensors. Instead, almost all the calculations are done with Maxwell.
I completely miss the point of this book.

This is the book solenoid design engineers have been waiting for decades: the last textbook on solenoids appeared in 1941, it was H. C. Roters "Electromagnetic Devices". Personally, I like "Magnetic Actuators and Sensors" more, than its predecessor. Not only for FEA approach, which I use on the daily basis, but also for the other reasons: it is very well organized and easy to read and understand. It has a plenty of good illustrations and examples/problems, which also helps understanding. The reader can even download a free version of MAXWELL FEA software to solve the problems.
I have very little experience with sensors; however, the way they are presented in the book justifies this unification.
I strongly recommend this book to every engineer wanting to learn magnetic actuators.

This is the first review that I am doing on Amazon. I thus decided to review a book which is helping me a lot nowadays. I have a mechanical engineering background and I am currently working in the field of electromechanics. I started learning electromagnetics (EM) on my own through many EM University-oriented books. But after some time I saw that very little is said in these books regarding low-frequency EM simulations and I did not find a single book offering practical and meaningful advice on how to carry EM simulations in software. So after I laid my hands on Dr. John Brauer's book, I could easily find that he has written an unique and a very good book in many aspects. The book is not thick but many important topics on actuator operation and EM simulations are clearly exposed.

The book is divided into four parts: Magnetics, Actuators, Sensors and Systems. The author starts with rather basic magnetics concepts and takes care to explain all new terms to the reader, At this time it can be useful to have complementary reading (the popular EM book by Chen will do fine) in case one is really very new with electromagnetics and needs more reading materials. Magnetic performance parameters are completely discussed. In the second part, attention is directed towards actuators operated by DC and AC, and transient operation is also discussed. This part is of much relevance in my work and though only linear actuators are discussed, the same principles can be translated to rotary actuators as well.

Many examples are found in the pages of the book. One unique feature of Dr. Brauer's book is the inclusion of numerous worked examples with Ansys or Ansoft's free Maxwell SV and Simplorer SV software. Repeating the examples in the book and doing the end-of-chapter exercises have significantly elevated my knowledge in EM simulations. Whenever an analytical solution is also possible, Dr. Brauer gives full details of the steps necessary and he often discusses any discrepancies between the estimated EM simulation results and the analytical calculations. For transient simulations, these can not be simulated with Maxwell SV and in this case results from Maxwell 2D are included and examined. So his examples are complete and valuable to the reader.

There are some typos in the book and the author maintains an updated errata list on his personal website (you can google for it). He is always pleased to hear comments regarding his book or for example if one has difficulty obtaining the free Maxwell SV software or Simplorer SV (this one is used in Part 4: Systems). One can also choose the free Spice LT rather than Simplorer SV. Other software such as VHDL/ADAMS and MATLAB/SIMULINK are used in Part 4. The last chapter deals with coupled electrohydraulic systems.

Dr. Brauer has published other book(s) and book chapters in EM analysis and his long experience in this field is easily seen in this 2006 book by various real-life examples. On a less positive side, in one or two examples in the book, dimensions regarding the geometrical aspects of the actuators are not explicitly given but the reader is not completely at a loss. Some dimensions are buried in the text and after some careful re-reading of some pages around the example, one will eventually figure out which dimensions to use. This can have the beneficial effect to make the reader become meticulous when designing the geometry in software. Dr. Brauer has published many articles and at times in the text he makes reference to these articles. One would have wished to have all details in this single volume only but then the book would become very thick. That said, this book is complete in itself and the references that the author points to are for those readers wishing to have extra reading and more details.

This book came out in 2006 and I believe that it the only one of its kind till today to cover low-frequency EM both at a theoretical and at a practical level. It is definitely a keeper for those who are serious in doing accurate low-frequency EM simulations as it has been carefully written. The reader will understand well the principles of finite element analysis even if he/she hasn't been exposed to it previously. No advanced mathematics is necessary and so this book will appeal to a wide range of readers.

PS: A few months ago I had the opportunity to read part of the author's online course on Magnetic Actuators and Sensors. I found Dr. Brauer to be a very enthusiastic lecturer and someone who enjoys sharing ideas with others.