High-temperature superconducting guidance force enhancement by a novel permanent magnet guideway for maglev curve negotiation

In order to enhance the guidance force, adding the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) bulks and permanent magnets in lateral direction is the simplest way especially in curve negotiation situations. However, as the core component of maglev system, permanent magnet guideway (PMG) consists of a huge amount of NdFeB magnets along the operation line. Hence, it means a huge construction cost to add the magnets in lateral direction. To help solving this issue, this paper discusses a PMG improvement methodology based on the widely-used two-pole Halbach PMG. This proposed novel PMG can enhance the guidance force by only adding air intervals between neighbor magnets and the flux-concentration irons and raising the onboard HTS bulks’ width accordingly. Firstly, a 2D electromagnetic theoretical model of the HTS bulk-PMG maglev system was built in the COMSOL Multiphysics. Then, under the different external magnetic fields of the PMGs with different air intervals, levitation and guidance performances of the typical onboard HTS bulk array at typical working conditions were discussed. The results showed that, with the suitable HTS bulks’ width, the guidance force can increase with the intervals increasing in a range. And the HTS maglev system adopting this idea can achieve a guidance force growth of about 41%. This PMG idea is appropriate for curve negotiation situations because of its higher ratio of the guidance force to the levitation force, without changing the basic magnetic circuit and the magnet block number of the previous linear PMG. •An efficient permanent magnet guideway (PMG) improvement idea for curve negotiation was proposed.•The PMGs with different parameters were compared in force performances, and one PMG structure was recommended.•Both the guidance force and the ratio of the guidance force to the levitation force were raised significantly by the new PMG.