What is Electromagnet?

What is Electromagnet?

Electromagnet is a piece of metal that becomes magnetic when an electric current passed through or near it. These magnets are formed by the wire when it is wrapped like a loop and current passes through this loop. When current passes through the coil magnetic field around the coil produced in a circular shape. Its density at the center of the loop is high and as moves away from the coil it strength decreases.

Mostly used conductor for the electromagnet is iron because it concentrates the flux produced by the current at the center and make high power electromagnet. The benefit of the electromagnet over the permanent magnet is that by adjusting the current, we can control its durability and magnetic field. In permanent magnet, it is not possible.

Working Principle of Electromagnets

So how do electromagnets work? Let’s consider the iron nail itself. Why does it does not produce a magnetic field when not influenced by an electric field?

Lines of Force around an Electromagnet

When the current passes through the wire it behaves like an electromagnet due to this current magnetic field will produce around the conductor. This field has its own north and south poles. It starts from the north pole and end at the south field. The strength of the field is higher at the center of the loop of the wire. And the strength decreases as moves away from the center.

If we wound more loops of the windings around the iron piece than the strength of the field can be increased. From this, we can conclude that the flux of any conductor is directly proportioned the amount of current passing through it and its number of the turns.

           MMF = I x N

In this equation, MMF is Magneto-motive force, N is the number of turns and I is the current in amperes.

Magnetic Strength of the Electromagnet

• In the Electromagnet, there are 2 conductors used first one is wire loop and other is conductor whose around the loop is wound.
• When the current passes through these conductors magnetic field produced in both the conductors and these fields interact with each other and force act on these 2 conductors.

• If the current passing through both the conductors has a similar direction then the conductors will have attraction among them you can see it in the above diagram.
• When the direction of the current is opposite then the field of 2 conductors become strong and both of them repel each other.

Advantages of an Electromagnet 

• The most important feature of the electromagnet is that the magnetic strength of it can be varied.
• If the current is not passing through the windings of the electromagnt than it works as an insulator when current passes through it becomes a magnet.
• If the current provided in large amperes than there is a larger increment in the strength of the magnet.
• This ability variation in the strength of the electromagnetic makes it useful in industries where the different value of the flux requires.

  Disadvantages of Electromagnet

• They heat up very fast
• It consumes a lot of energy
• They can store huge amounts of energy in their magnetic field. If the electric current is interrupted, the energy will discharge

Applications of Electromagnet

There are many applications of the electromagnets in the industries, home and also in medical equipment. Let’s discuss these applications.

• It used in heavy types of machinery used in factories, and smaller electronic instruments like motors.
• It also used for different experiments for the production of the magnetic field.
• If the electromagnet is in the form of the solenoids, it used for the creation of the uniform magnetic field.
• It used in transformer for the production of the flux in the transformer, the core of the transformer behaves like an electromagnet.
• It used in different electrical relays.
• The working of the loudspeaker used in the seminar also depends on the electromagnet.
• Medical resonance imaging machine also used for the production of the magnetic field.
• It also used in hard disks VCR (videocassette recorder), and tape recorder.

We hope you understand this detailed article on the electromagnet, We have included each and everything related to the electromagnet. Thanks for reading.