Modular Maglev: Design and implementation of a modular magnetic levitation system to levitate a 2D Halbach array

A modular magnetic levitation system with static square coils and a moving 2D Halbach array is proposed in this paper. The mover achieves six degrees of freedom (DOF) motion with long stroke translational motion and yaw motion. A novel 2D lookup table is used to model the force and torque on the mover, including the edge effect. The 2D lookup table uses force decay ratio (FDR) and effective torque arms (ETA) to reduce the table dimension. At each levitation height, the proposed data-driven model reduces table size from 964,806 points to 791 points. This reduced-dimension table is validated to support the 6 DOF motion, including infinite yaw rotation. Then, a direct wrench and active coil selection method is used to decouple the force and torque and determine the coil currents. With the force and torque model and the active coil selection method, the mover can move across different sets of active coils for long stroke movement. Lastly, experimental validation results are presented. The motion range is $\pm$120 mm in the horizontal direction, with a maximum speed of 500 mm/s. The system is validated to have a full 360° range of yaw motion with a maximum speed of 75 °/s.