A Study on the Shape of Iron-Core for a Hybrid Electro-Magnetic Suspension System

This paper deals with the shape design of the iron-core of a hybrid EMS (electro-magnetic suspension) system. A proto-type hybrid EMS system was developed by Yonsei University in 2010 [1], [2]. It is the first step of study on fundamental technology for advanced railroad systems development. The hybrid EMS system requires cooling systems because it uses superconducting magnets [3], [4]. These cooling systems can influence costs to making and operating the hybrid EMS system. Therefore, a study to reduce the number of cooling systems needs to be carried out in order to economically commercialize the hybrid EMS system. In this paper, a method that reduces the number of cooling systems of the hybrid EMS system was proposed. To achieve this, a small-scale iron-core and coils assembly was fabricated. Using this system, characteristics of levitation force according to the structure of the iron-core was evaluated. Also, numerical analysis using the FEM tool in order to evaluate the levitation force and net force of a full-scale model was performed. This paper can be expected to suggest useful data for the design of a hybrid EMS system.