Vertical and lateral drift behavior of a linear SMB system under multi-operating modes

Since the discovery of high temperature superconducting (HTS) material, HTS maglev with the characteristics of self-stabilization and zero magnetic drag, has shown excellent potential for the future transportation application. However, this stability characteristic of HTS maglev is difficult to be fully ensured in a spatial position, because of the magnetic flux flow and creep of the HTS bulk. Hence, to study the drift phenomenon of the HTS maglev vehicle excited by this unguaranteed stability characteristic, the linear superconducting magnetic bearing (SMB) system, composed of a ring permanent magnetic guideway line (double track) and a HTS maglev vehicle "Su-per-Maglev", was utilized. This system aims to explore the drift phenomenon in the vertical and lateral direction of the whole maglev vehicle under various operation conditions: different running speed, unbalance loading and cyclic loading situations. As an illustration induced by the experimental results, the lateral drift (LD) in faster running speed (15 km/h) is twice than that in 10 km/h. And com-pared to the constant load condition, the vertical drift (VD) in the cyclic load is larger. Moreover, with time going by, both of LD and VD tend to be stable. Specifically, for the LD curve, it can be fitted by an exponential function. Finally, all the above experimental re-sults support reference for the future design and study of linear SMB systems.