Modeling dynamic behavior of superconducting maglev systems under external disturbances

Abstract

For a maglev system, vertical and lateral displacements of the levitation body may simultaneously occur under external disturbances, which often results in changes in the levitation and guidance forces and even causes some serious malfunctions. To fully understand the effect of external disturbances on the levitation performance, in this work, we build a two-dimensional numerical model on the basis of Newton's second law of motion and a mathematical formulation derived from magnetoquasistatic Maxwell's equations together with a nonlinear constitutive relation between the electric field and the current density. By using this model, we present an analysis of dynamic behavior for two typical maglev systems consisting of an infinitely long superconductor and a guideway of different arrangements of infinitely long parallel permanent magnets. The results show that during the vertical movement, the levitation force is closely associated with the flux motion and the moving velocity of the superconductor. After being disturbed at the working position, the superconductor has a disturbance-induced initial velocity and then starts to periodically vibrate in both lateral and vertical directions. Meanwhile, the lateral and vertical vibration centers gradually drift along their vibration directions. The larger the initial velocity, the faster their vibration centers drift. However, the vertical drift of the vertical vibration center seems to be independent of the direction of the initial velocity. In addition, due to the lateral and vertical drifts, the equilibrium position of the superconductor in the maglev systems is not a space point but a continuous range.