Polarized Linear Motor Combined With Levitation Actuators Working in a Partial Vacuum Environment — Application to Swissmetro

Worldwide high speed Maglev (> 400km/h) developments refer to Maglev such as the Japanese JR-Maglev MLX, the German Transrapid and the USA Inductrack Maglev. Other world projects exist such as the Japan HSST (< 300km/h) and the China HTC. The JR-Maglev, the Transrapid and the HSST have reached industrial levels. The Swissmetro Project presents a unique aspect of Maglev: it is designed to work under partial vacuum (< 10kPa) in two tunnels and for high speeds (>400km/h). The authors investigate new possibilities to combine both the propulsion and the levitation. In order to minimize the heat due to the motor levitation and guidance losses, a polarized excitation is proposed. The use of permanent magnet NdFeB for the excitation is still not applied for high speed Maglev, requiring mechanical power greater than 6MW. Such a solution only appears in Urban Rapid Transit Maglev (