How to Design an Eddy Current Braking System for a Roller Coaster?

[bill nye scienceguy!]

I have to try and design said system for a university project where we're designing a roller coaster. Basically its going to be a copper fin that will move between two magnets but I have no idea how to calculate the mass of copper and strength of magnet I'll need to decelerate the car sufficiently. I'm using permanent magnets rather than electro-magnets for safety reasons.

can anyone help?

 

[berkeman]

Do not multiple post your questions. I've deleted the other two threads you started in other forums, and left this one here. This is probably the most appropriate forum for your question, since it's a moderately advanced project, rather than standard homework.

 

[sunday]

Maybe this link is useful: http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1989049

It's a reference to a paper in IEEE transactions on magnetics (IEEE trans. magn.) ISSN 0018-9464