Improving the Safety Margin and Vibration Stability of High-Temperature Superconducting Maglev Transport Systems: A New Approach

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) pinning magnetic levitation (maglev) is one key technology for future high-speed railway transportation. However, such the HTS maglev comes with potential safety hazards, such as the inherent passive levitation which may lead to an unknown attenuation in the levitation performance. In the event of severe external magnetic field disturbances, the superconducting levitator with HTS bulks inside may vibrate violently or even come into contact with the permanent magnet guideway (PMG). It may be unable to actively avoid dangerous situations. In order to suppress these levitation force attenuation and levitation drifts, an active inhibition structure of electromagnetic coil surrounding HTS bulk is proposed, and a new model of electromagnetic-pinning hybrid levitation (EPHL) is firstly established. The PID-based active control strategy can make the HTS magnetic levitation effectively avoid the safety hazards such as levitation drift and resonance. In the full speed domain (speed≤1500 km/h), the vibration acceleration suppression rate is increased by 11.5%–98.4%, and the safety margin is increased by 10.6%–34.6%. It is believed that this work can provide both a reliable simulation method and an active control scheme for the next-generation safety design of HTS magnetic levitation.