A Suspension Damping Enhancement Method Based on Permanent Magnet Damping Conductive Plate for Superconducting Maglev Sled

As an emerging and highly promising magnetic levitation technology, superconducting (SC) electrodynamic suspension (EDS) can be applied to areas such as high-speed maglev transport, ultrahigh-speed electromagnetic propulsion, and launching. However, the low-damping characteristics of the SC EDS system lead to vibration and even suspension instability during its operation. Therefore, the low damping problem has been a key issue for the EDS system. Aiming to solve the instability problem of the EDS system for a high-speed maglev sled, this article proposes a passive damping scheme based on the permanent magnet damping conductive plate (PMDCP) structure, which utilizes PM Halbach arrays fixed on the sled to induce eddy currents in the conductive plates fixed along the track as the sled is traveling. First, the structure and principle of the PMDCP damping enhancement scheme are introduced, and the second-order vector potential (SOVP) is introduced to deduce the theoretical calculation (TC) formula of the electromagnetic force, and the 3-D finite-element analysis (FEA) is applied to validate the TC. Second, the optimization of the dimensions of the permanent magnet (PM) arrays is discussed. Third, an experimental rotating test rig is constructed to verify the TC. Finally, the proposed passive damping scheme is applied to a virtual prototype co-simulation model to study the damping effect on the dynamic responses of the maglev sled system. The results show that the scheme can significantly increase the damping of the system, and the vibrations of the vertical movement and the pitching motion of the vehicle can be well suppressed. The passive damping scheme proposed in this article shows great potential for application to vehicle structures with SC EDS systems.