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As a new strategy for magnetic levitation envisioned in 1990s, the Inductrack system with permanent magnets (PMs) aligned in Halbach arrays has been intensively studied and applied in many projects. Due to the nonlinear, time-varying electro-magneto-mechanical coupling in such a system, the dynamic behaviors are complicated with transient responses, which in most cases can hardly be predicted with fidelity by a steady-state Inductrack model. Presented in this paper is a benchmark 2-DOF transient Inductrack model, which is derived from the first laws of nature, without any assumed steady-state quantities. It is shown that the dynamic response of the Inductrack dynamic system is governed by a set of nonlinear integro-differential equations. As demonstrated in numerical simulations with the transient model, unstable vibrations in the levitation direction occur when the traveling speed of the vehicle exceeds a threshold. To resolve this instability issue, feedback control is implemented in the Inductrack system. In the development, an assembly of Halbach arrays and active coils that are wound on the PMs is proposed to achieve a controllable source magnetic field. In this preliminary investigation, the proposed control system design process takes two main steps. First, a PID controller is set and tuned based on a simple lumped-mass dynamic system. Second, the nonlinear force-current correlation is obtained from a lookup table that is pre-calculated by steady-state truncation of the full transient Inductrack model. With the implemented feedback control algorithms, numerical examples display that the motion of the vehicle in levitation direction can be effectively stabilized at different traveling speeds. Although only a 2-DOF transient model is used here, the modeling technique and the controller design approach developed in this work are potentially applicable to more complicated models of Inductrack Maglev systems.

As a new strategy for magnetic levitation envisioned in the 1990s, the Inductrack system with Halbach arrays of permanent magnets has been intensively researched. The previous investigations discovered that an uncontrolled Inductrack system may be unstable even if the vehicle travels well below its operating speed and that instability can be persistent near and beyond the operating speed. It is therefore necessary to stabilize the system for safety and reliability. With strong nonlinearities and complicated electromagneto-mechanical coupling, however, the transient response of such a dynamic system is difficult to predict with fidelity. Because of this, model-based feedback control of Inductrack systems has not been well addressed. In this paper, by taking advantage of a recently available two degrees-of-freedom transient model, a new feedback control method for Inductrack systems is proposed. In the control system development, active Halbach arrays are used as an actuator, and a feedback control law, which combines a properly tuned proportional-integral-derivative controller and a nonlinear force-current mapping function, is created. The proposed control law is validated in numerical examples, where the transient motion of an Inductrack vehicle traveling at constant speeds is considered. As shown in the simulation, the control law efficiently stabilizes the Inductrack system in a wide range of operating speed, and in the meantime, it renders a smooth system output (real-time levitation gap) with fast convergence to any prescribed reference step input (desired levitation gap).

In Part I of this two-part paper, a new benchmark transient model of Inductrack systems is developed. In this Part II, the proposed model, which is governed by a set of non-linear integro-differential governing equations, is used to predict the dynamic response of Inductrack systems. In the development, a state-space representation of the non-linear governing equations is established and a numerical procedure with a specific moving circuit window for transient solutions is designed. The dynamic analysis of Inductrack systems with the proposed model has two major tasks. First, the proposed model is validated through comparison with the noted steady-state results in the literature. Second, the transient response of an Inductrack system is simulated and analyzed in several typical dynamic scenarios. The steady-state response results predicted by the new model agree with those obtained in the previous studies. On the other hand, the transient response simulation results reveal that an ideal steady-state response can hardly exist in those investigated dynamic scenarios. It is believed that the newly developed transient model provides a useful tool for dynamic analysis of Inductrack systems and for in-depth understanding of the complicated electro-magneto-mechanical interactions in this type of dynamic systems.

A study that compares between decentralized and centralized controllers for electromagnetic suspension (EMS) Maglev systems that use combined magnets with an inverted U-rail for levitation and lateral control is presented. A simple 2-DOF (degrees of freedom) Maglev system model (rigid and flexible body cases) that comprises heave and lateral modes is used. The study is based on two aspects. First, by sketching the multi-input multi-output (MIMO) root loci with every controller individually for system rigid and flexible body cases. Second, a gradient-like search algorithm based on an optimal criterion for decentralized and centralized controllers' gains tuning is used. The work is generalized on a real EMS Maglev system, and the simulation results for these Maglev systems shows that the centralized control is more capable of lateral displacements suppression that may result from disturbing lateral forces than the decentralized one.