Levitation mechanism modelling for maglev transportation system

A novel maglev transportation system was proposed for large travel range ultra precision motion. The system consists of a levitation subsystem and a propulsion subsystem. During the propulsion subsystem driving the moving platform along the guideway, the levitation subsystem uses six pairs of electromagnets to steadily suspend the moving platform over the guideway. The model of the levitation system, which is a typical nonlinear multi-input multi-output coupling system and has many inner nonlinear coupling characteristics, was deduced. For testifying the model, the levitation mechanism was firstly controlled by proportional-integral-differential (PID) control, and then a lot of input-output data were collected for model parameter identification. The least-square parameter identification method was used. The identification results prove that the model is feasible and suitable for the real system.