Minimization of the induced current effects in the shields of SC coils in EDS-MAGLEV trains

In magnetically levitated transport systems of the electrodynamic type, eddy-currents in the shield of the on-board superconducting coils are caused by the harmonics of the magnetic field produced by the on-ground coils, in particular by the reaction field of the levitation coils. The paper presents a method to optimize the geometrical sizes of both the superconducting and the levitation coils, with the aim to minimize the field harmonic content on the shield. The method is based on the iterative application of analytical expressions of the flux density produced by the levitation coils. As an example of application, a given configuration is optimized according to the proposed technique; the shield eddy-current losses are calculated by means of a 3D FEM code for both the starting and the optimized configurations and the results are compared.<>