High gap maglev model and experimental validation

Magnetic Levitation is a powerful physical phenomena which, if correctly controlled, allows frictionless relative motion between two bodies. One of the main features of this system is that it could also provide active damping. However, in order to damp vibrations, a high gap is requested. The analytical model is insufficient to correctly describe the behaviour of such a system, as a lot of secondary effects rise. In order to study this problem in detail, the study of a simple single degree of freedom Maglev is proposed. The paper shows how the analytical model, which is used to build the active control, can influence the behaviour of the real system, and then a way to improve this model is discussed. Relying on FEM analysis, analytical and numerical models are compared, and the analytical one is improved, in order to guarantee a higher performance control. Both analytical and numerical model-based control are tested on an experimental test-bench. Results prove how the numerical model-based control can guarantee much better performance with the same computational costs.