The only commercial high-speed maglev, the Shanghai Maglev, is now the fastest train in existence. It travels over 50 mph 80 kph faster than the fastest high-speed wheel-rail kph Hayabusa , And it is only the first. The lack of friction between the train and the guideway removes many limits that bound traditional trains. Maglev will only get faster from here Luu, There are other, more subtle qualities that also make maglev attractive:.
Although there are many upsides, there are still reasons why maglev trains are not being built everywhere. Perhaps the biggest reason is that maglev guideways are not compatible with existing rail infrastructure. Any organization attempting to implement a maglev system must start from scratch and build a completely new set of tracks.
This involves a very high initial investment Coates, Even though guideways cost less than rails over time Powell, , it is hard to justify spending so much upfront. Another problem is that maglev trains travel fast, but they might not travel quite fast enough.
It is hard to dispute that these trains are superior to standard ones. Regardless, more work needs to be done before it is worth implementing them worldwide.
Ever since the steam engine, trains have traditionally been in the domain of mechanical engineers. They were all motors and axles, wheels and engines. However, the introduction of maglev technology has broken that tradition.
Developing these trains has required input from a number of different fields other than mechanical engineering, including physics and chemistry. Most importantly, though, it has brought electrical engineers to the table. From the beginning, electrical engineers have been major contributors to developing maglev technology. Eric Laithwaite, an electrical engineer, developed the first linear induction motor, an important and necessary precursor to maglev trains. Hermann Kemper, who many believe to be the father of maglev, was also an electrical engineer.
German and Japanese electrical engineers worked to establish the maglev programs in their respective nations. And today, electrical engineers are making the technology better and better so that it may appeal to countries all over the world.
Maglev trains have surprisingly few moving parts. They are all about electric currents, magnets, and wire loops. Some important topics to the field are electromagnetic fields and waves, circuit theory, feedback control systems, and power engineering. All these fall under the expertise of electrical engineers.
Therefore it is electrical engineers that are needed to solve the biggest problems this technology faces. The trains need to be made faster and more energy efficient. All the while they need to be kept well within boundaries of safety. The guideways need to be made cheaper, easier to implement, and perhaps more compatible with existing rails. The control systems need to be made flawless. All of these issues and more are calling out for an electrical engineer to come unravel their answers.
Maglev technology holds great promise for the future. It has the potential to be a cheaper, faster, safer, and greener form of transportation than we have today. And with the help of some electrical engineers, it will become all of these things. There are possible applications for this technology in anything from intercity public transportation to cross-country trips. There are even proposals to build long underground tubes, suck the air out of the tubes, and place maglev trains inside of them.
In this setting there would be virtually no wind resistance, so a train could easily reach speeds exceeding the speed of sound Thornton, While it may be a long time before this technology becomes prevalent, it is difficult to deny that it will at some point be prevalent. The advantages are too hard to ignore. As of now there is only one commercial maglev train in use, and it has already eclipsed everything that has come before it.
How will this technology evolve and improve as we move into the future? Only time will tell. But it is highly plausible that we now stand at the precipice of a transportation revolution. I, for one, look forward to gliding across the countryside at mph in a levitating box of magnets. The trip, which costs 3 million Euros, will provide four days in orbit kilometers above the earth and includes 18 weeks of training on a Caribbean island for the tourists to prepare for their spaceflight.
After reaching approximately the speed of sound, the spaceship will detach from its maglev carrier and accelerator and will ascend to orbit using rocket or air-breathing engines.
The maglev accelerator will then brake to a stop and return to its starting point for the next launch. The launch track will be about 3 kilometers long. Maglev launch assist technology will enable space tourists to travel to our space resorts in orbit on a commercial basis.
The most expensive part of any space travel to low-Earth orbit is the first few seconds—getting off the ground. This technology is cost competitive with other forms of space transportation, environmentally friendly and inherently safety.
The stay at the hotel will offer a mixed programme of reflection and exercise to seize the unique physical conditions encountered in space. One of the most innovative experiences that tourists can experience is the bathroom in zero gravity. Galactic Suite has developed the space spa. Inside the spa, tourists can float with 20 liters of water bubbles. According to Galactic Suite materials, the tourist, already trained to avoid the effects of water in a state of weightlessness, can play with the bubble dividing it into thousands of bubbles in a never-ending game.
In addition, the transparent sphere may be shared with other guests. Galactic Suite is a private space tourism company, founded in Barcelona in The company hopes to make space tourism available to the general public and will combine an intensive program of training astronauts to relax with a programme of activities on a tropical island as a process preparation to space travel. The launch ring consists of a maglev system in which a levitated vehicle is accelerated in an evacuated circular tunnel until it reaches a desired velocity and then releases a projectile into a path leading to the atmosphere.
The cost of this technology, even with partially reusable rockets, has remained sufficiently high that its use has remained limited.
There is general acceptance that a lower cost alternative to rockets would greatly increase the volume of traffic to space see Figures 17 and 18 [ 17 , 18 ]. The space elevator is probably the best-known proposed alternative technology to rockets. The usual contemporary design concept for a space elevator is based around a mechanical cable extending radially inward and outward from a geosynchronous orbit, usually with a counterweight at the outer radius and with the innermost part of the cable attached to the ground at the equator.
An elevator car can then attach to the cable and ferry people or material up or down. In principle, such a cable can be constructed by tapering the cross section from a small diameter at the ends to a very thick diameter at the geosynchronous point.
In practice, the strength of presently available engineering materials makes the mass of such a cable uncomfortably large. Most gun concepts involve short acceleration times, and the subsequent large power supplies to boost even modest masses to the required velocity are likely to be expensive.
Electromagnetic launch has been proposed to give rockets an initial velocity component, with most of the required velocity provided by combustion of the propellant [ 22 ]. Ground-based, high-powered lasers that augment the chemical energy of rocket propellant will also likely require large power supplies [ 21 ].
The maglev fan provides superior performance, low noise, and long life. By using magnetic levitation forces, these fans feature zero friction with no contact between shaft and bearing. With excellent rotational stability, the maglev fan eliminates vibration and typical wobble and shaking typically experienced in fan motors. The maglev fan also provides excellent high temperature endurance that results in long life, and the maglev fan models also feature all-plastic manufacture of major items for optimal insulation resistance and electrostatic discharge ESD performance.
The maglev fan offers a true solution to equipment and systems cooling, with the promise of lower cost of ownership and long service life. The maglev fan overcomes the problems of noise, abrasion, and short service life that beset traditional fan motors. The maglev motor fan features zero friction and no contact between the shaft and bearing during operation.
The maglev fan design is based on magnetic principles and forces that not only propel the fan but also ensure stable rotation over its entire degrees of movement. Utilizing the attraction of the magnetic levitation force, maglev eliminates the wobbling and shaking problems of traditional motor fans.
With this new technology, the maglev fan propeller is suspended in air during rotation so that the shaft and bearing do not come into direct contact with each other to create friction. The result is a new and improved fan with a low noise level, high temperature endurance, and long life. Maglev fans can be used in various industries and products that require high-level heat transfer, such as notebook computers, servers, projectors, and stereo systems.
Traditional fans apply the principle of like-pole repulsion to rotate. But with no control exerted over blade trajectory, the fan blades tend to produce irregular shuddering and vibrations. After long-term use, the shaft will cause severe abrasion on the bearings, distorting them into a horn shape. The worn-out fan then starts to produce mechanical noises and its life-time is shortened. The unique feature of the maglev fan is that the path of the fan blades during operation is magnetically controlled.
The result is that the shaft and bearing have no direct contact during operation and so experience no friction no matter how the fan is oriented. This means that the characteristic abrasion noises of worn-out components are not produced and also allow a service life of 50, hours or even longer at room temperature see Figure In a traditional fan, the embedded magnets of the rotor and the stator exert repulsive forces, and it is this continuous force of repulsion that makes the fan spin.
This is the basic principle behind all cooling fans. If we visualize the magnetic forces between the stator and the rotor, we see only dense lines of standard magnetic flux running without any control mechanism to stabilize vibration of the blade rotor during the repulsion-driven operation. The maglev fan includes just such a control mechanism in its design. This requires that each fan, in addition to standard magnetic flux, contains maglev flux required to sustain for the unique maglev orbit in its design.
A maglev cross-section view reveals a uniquely designed set of conductive elements on the main board—the maglev plate. This maglev plate and the embedded magnets in the fan blades together generate comprehensive vertical magnetic forces, which is the maglev flux.
From the cross-section, the standard magnetic flux and maglev flux form a degree vertical angle, in others words, the maglev flux acts perpendicular to the standard magnetic flux. This is the first key trait to use to identify a maglev fan. The design of vertically intersected standard magnetic flux and maglev flux ensures that the rotator is affixed to the maglev orbit.
Therefore, regardless of the mounting angle of the fan, the shaft will always rotate around a fixed point and at a constant distance from the bearing without coming in contact with it to produce friction or mechanical noise. The problem of bearings being worn down into an oval shape or horn aperture after long use is effectively resolved.
The greatest benefit with maglev flux is in fact the degree complete force of attraction between the conductive element maglev plate and the rotor above it. This ensures an evenly distributed force of attraction to help keep the optimal balance of the rotor during operation and to avoid shuddering or instability. Fans with well-balanced blades not only last longer but produce a steady air flow.
In the traditional DC brush-less fan motor design, the impeller rotor simply called Rotor by means of a shaft which extended through the bore of oil-impregnated bearing, or sleeve bearing, pivotally held in the center position of motor stator.
A suitable air gap was maintained between the rotor and the stator. Of course, there must be gap between shaft and bearing bore, otherwise, the shaft would be tight-locked and unable to rotate. The stator assembly simply called stator after connection to power supply will generate induced magnet flux between rotor and stator. With the control of driving circuitry the fan motor will start to rotate. In a traditional fan motor structure, there is an impeller rotor, a motor stator, and a driving circuitry.
The rotor is pivotally joined to the stator by the rotor shaft and bearing system. The rotor is driven to rotate by the induced magnetic field between stator and rotor as shown in Figure Advantages of sleeve bearing are the following. Imperfections of sleeve bearing are the following. The inner surface of bearing bore easily gets worn and influences the performance.
The space between the shaft and sleeve-bearing bore is small this results in rough uneven start-ups. Ball bearing workings utilize small metal balls for rotation. Since they have only point-contacts, rotation can be started easily. With the use of springs to hold the outer metal ring of the ball bearing above, the weight of the entire rotor can sit on the ball bearing, indirectly supported by the springs. Therefore, ball bearings are ideal for use in portable devices with various mounting angles.
However, caution should be used to prevent the product from falling and impact damaging the ball bearing, which could lead to noise and shortened product life-time see Figure Advantages of ball bearing are the following.
Imperfections of ball bearing are the following. It cannot bear any external impact. When a spinning top a kind of toy is thrown, the top continues to accelerate even as it hits the ground. During this acceleration the top tilts and sways until a consistent speed is obtained. At this point, the top will balance itself, for example, the swaying and tilting have faded and have become fixed perpendicular to the ground.
This is the simple concept that maglev fan system roots form see Figure From the illustration above, we know that no matter how the motor fan is mounted, the force induced by the existing magnet inside the hub and the magnetic plate that is added to the PCB of the fan attracts the rotor continually.
This results in the rotor rotating perpendicular to the ground with a constant distance between bearing and shaft without any contact. Therefore, no rubs or noise can occur.
The operating life of the motor fan is extremely long see Figure Consequently, the shaft inside the Vapo bearing bore turns without creating friction. The bearing bore is hardly ever abraded into irregular or oval shapes such as seen in conventional fans. Hence the operating life of the bearing becomes very long. There are no more clogging problems. Hence, the fan motor may operate smoothly for quite a long time. When used in conjunction with the maglev, it creates a spring function, which helps the fan motor to bear impact.
It also performs very well in a low temperature environment. With the combination of maglev design and Vapo bearing, all the advantages of ball and sleeve bearings are maintained, while eradicating all the imperfections.
Vapo Bearing can be explained as follows. No vibration occurred. Vapo bearing is named after this character. Maglev fans prevent the defects of conventional fans see Table 1. There is no friction and contact between the shaft and the bearing during operation. They have become favorite due to its superior features such as low noise, high temperature endurance, and super long life.
The axial-flow radial-flux permanent magnet motor along with an iron strip segment, as shown in Figure 25 , has been used for small-power cooling fan applications [ 23 ]. This motor is equipped with only one set of axial stator winding that can supply the desired radial flux through adequate stator pole design, and such structure design is quite promising for applications with limited spaces.
With the undesired vibration forces mainly generated in the motor radial direction, the concept is to provide adequate flux path such that a passive magnetic suspension can be established. With the pole pairs on the stator top and bottom parts being perpendicular to one another, undesired vibration forces mainly generated in the motor radial direction will be exhibited.
The resultant frictions applied onto motor bearing system will certainly generate extra heat and energy losses and thus reduce the reliability and lifetime of this motor [ 24 , 25 ]. In addition, to satisfy these construction prerequisites, it is also desired that the overall performance of such motors can preserve their market competitions without implementing complicate sensor and driver control devices. A magnetic suspension will be established through the extra flux path being provided.
Though it is anticipated that the attraction force between the rotor permanent magnet and the passive magnetic suspension segment will be induced to stabilize the rotor vibrations, intuitively it is also suspected that this segment with high permeability might yield the motor rotational performance [ 25 ].
Heat failure is one of the main causes of death. Treatments of heart failure generally have heart transplantation, ventricular mechanical assistance, artificial organs substitution, and so on. Although heart transplantation is a relatively nature technology, there is a serious shortage of donated hearts and will result in transplant rejection reaction.
The support of traditional artificial heart pumps often uses rolling or sliding bearings. Because of the contact between bearing and blood, the blood will be polluted and will easily produce thrombosis.
With the development of maglev, motor and control technology, artificial heart pump overcome the problems such as friction, sealing, and lubrication, which reduced the damage of blood cells and improved the heart pump life and safety. Artificial heart pump requires small structure, low energy consumption, certain stiffness and damping for transplanting, and long time using.
A hybrid-type axial maglev blood pump not only has small size, almost no energy, and poor dynamic characteristics of permanent magnet bearing but also has low power consumption, long life, and good dynamic characteristics of magnetic bearing.
Artificial heart pump also known as blood pump can be divided into displacement, pulsating, and continuous-flow heart pump. The bionic performance of pulsating pump is good but its disadvantages are relatively large volume and will be prone to hemolysis because it has big blood contact area.
These shortcomings seriously restricted its application. Continuous-flow artificial heart pump can be divided into axial flow pump, centrifugal pump, and mixed flow pump.
Maglev centrifugal heart pump has a greater pressure in a small flow rate and has fewer destruction to blood in low speed, while its disadvantage is not suitable for implantation; the axial maglev heart pump has a big flow rate, low pressure, which need to increase speed for obtaining much greater pressure. Axial flow pump has a tight structure, smaller drive components, low power consumption, light weight, high efficiency, and so forth, so it is easier to implant and can save the cost of the surgery and the possibility of infection, but its impeller has a high speed and its hemolytic is also high.
Either axial or centrifugal, the traditional supports are contacted bearings such as ceramic bearing, and there are some problems about friction, lubrication, and sealing which is easy to damage the blood, leading to hemolysis and blood clots. The magnetic bearing avoid, contact of rotor and stator by the magnetic force which does not need lubrication and overcome the traditional shortcomings such as direct friction, big loss, and short life, and it is one of the ideal support for a new generation of artificial heart pump [ 27 , 28 ].
This theorem is applicable only to a levitator in static state. A passive magnetic PM bearings could achieve stable maglev in all centrifugal pumps, if the rotor had high enough speed and thus obtained a so-called gyroeffect, namely, a rotating body with high enough speed could maintain its rotation stably [ 29 , 30 ].
To simplify the electrically maglev rotary pumps, a shaft-less full-permanent maglev impeller pump without actively controlled coil for rotor suspension has been developed Figure Once it is cold enough to exhibit superconductivity, however, those magnetic fields get expelled. Any magnetic fields that were passing through must instead move around it. Follow Jennifer Hackett on Twitter. Already a subscriber?
Sign in. Thanks for reading Scientific American. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. See Subscription Options. China is seriously considering dozens of potential maglev routes, all of them in congested areas that require high-capacity mass transportation. These won't be high-speed trains. Instead, they'll move lots of people over shorter distances at lower speeds. Nevertheless, China manufactures all of its own maglev technologies and is about to unveil a third-generation commercial maglev line with a top speed of around mph kph and — unlike previous versions — is completely driverless, relying instead on computer sensors for acceleration and braking The country already has some maglev trains in operation but they need a driver.
It's impossible to know exactly how maglevs will figure into the future of human transportation. Advances in self-driving cars and air travel may complicate the deployment of maglev lines. If the hyperloop industry manages to generate momentum, it could disrupt all sorts of transportation systems. And some engineers suspect that even flying cars, though incredibly pricey, might trump rail systems in the future because they don't need massive infrastructure projects to get off the ground.
Perhaps in just a decade or two, nations around the world will have come to a verdict on maglev trains. Maybe they'll become a linchpin of high-speed travel, or simply pet projects that serve just fragments of certain populations in crowded urban area.
Or perhaps they'll simply fade into history, a nearly magical form of levitation technology that just never really took off. Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe. How Maglev Trains Work. A magnetically levitated maglev train developed by Central Japan Railways Co.
A large electrical power source Metal coils lining a guideway or track Large guidance magnets attached to the underside of the train. The Maglev Track " ". The Maglev track allows the train to float above the track through the use of repelling magnets. Learn about the Maglev track and see a diagram of a Magelev track. Maglev Accidents.
Electrodynamic Suspension EDS " ". Above is an image of the guideway for the Yamanashi maglev test line in Japan. Photos courtesy Railway Technical Research Institute. Maglev Technology In Use " ". Sources Beanland, Christopher. May 29, June 15, Department of Energy. March 4,
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