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IronLev has demonstrated the first-ever magnetic levitation test on regular train tracks
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- Authors
- Joshua Hawkins, Jacob Siegal, Joe Wituschek, José Adorno, Andy Meek
- Published
- Mar 17 2024
- Word count
- 452 words
Pretty cool concept, reminds me of another technology that's super niche but worked in a similar way:
Lighthouses used to use liquid mercury to reduce the weight of the rotating Fresnel lenses at the top. The lenses themselves were made of bronze/brass/copper, and could weight over a ton, so putting them on top of a container of liquid mercury counteracted some of the weight via buoyancy. Less weight meant less friction which meant easier rotation.
Unless I'm mistaken, this is like that except the lens is the train and the mercury is the magnet. Reduce the weight of the train via magnetism (or make it 'float' entirely) and then they should be much easier and more fuel-efficient to get moving. Seems like such a simple concept (the lighthouse/mercury thing was already being used well over a century ago) that I'm surprised it hasn't been replicated for rail transportation. I'm no scientist (fucking magnets, how do they work?), but were magnets just not strong/stable enough in the past? Or were they just too expensive and fossil fuels too cheap?
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Maglev train technology has been around for decades. The fastest trains in the world, Japan, China, and South Korea, use maglev. The problem is that existing implementations require very expensive, specialized tracks.
I am only superficially familiar with the technology itself, but my understanding is that existing maglev implementations require coils of superconducting materials to be installed on the tracks. So IronLev's technology finds a way to repel the traincar without these special coils. If I understand correctly, it reacts to the iron in the tracks and nothing else. I am not really sure how that works, but they claim they have not installed magnets on the tracks.
That could be wrong, but it is my understanding from the scant information I have gathered from a couple articles on this. I am also no scientist.
I wish somebody knowledgeable on the physics could explain how this works.
Here's my guess: Assume that the electromagnets in the train oscillate much faster than the iron in the tracks is magnetized. Repelling force is generated by (1) magnetizing a section of the tracks; (2) reversing the polarity of the magnet to generate repulsion.
If this is done very quickly with alternating sets of electromagnets that are at different phases in the polarity cycle, perhaps continuous lift can be generated? It may be more efficient for the train to be moving, rather than stationary, so that the polarity pattern of the tracks can be used instead of having to magnetize the same section repeatedly. After "depleting" the polarity of one section, the subsequent electromagnet can match the polarity and generate repulsion again.
Somebody linked their site (and deleted the comment?) but quite usefully I was able to get a better view of the mechanism. It looks like a motor of some sort spinning a wheel on the side of the track. Perhaps that's a permanent magnet?
I am honestly skeptical that this is legit, but I suppose time will tell.
Part of my research involves something along these lines, but on a much smaller scale. I would imagine it's using Lenz Law (specifically, eddy currents) to create an electromagnetic response using the spinning motors to induce the momentary magnetism. The biggest issue is heat creation in the foundation tracks, but I would assume it might not be a big deal for something like this (heat dissipation), but does depend on the materials in the tracks, assuming it's iron, then they shouldn't have a problem.
No way you're floating a 20 ton rail car over a piece of conventional steel railway track like that. Especially not without using external electrical power.
They claim to use permanent magnets in the car. I don't see a way how you levitate over a piece of railway steel using a permanent magnet.
From a physical perspective, their website is extremely vage on how this all works. I also couldn't find any patent applications by IronLev, either. The longer I think of this the more certain I become that this is scam.
It's possible, but not at the size they are developing. This test vehicle is only 1ton, and you can reasonably build devices that levitate 200+ pounds the size of a skateboard (as an example, see the Hendo Hoverboard from 2014 that used the same concept). With higher end equipment, and onboard batteries, you most certainly could do this.
I am not saying I'm not skeptical as well, butit's certainly in the realm of possibility. They used permanent magnets rotated at high speeds, and I imagine this company likely does as well after looking through their other offerings and accomplishments. If you notice they always mention external power not onboard, such as batteries.Edit: on the topic of patents.
From what I can tell, this is a project founded by Adriano Girotto and Ales Tech, Girotta has quite a few patents to his name in all sorts of manner similar to this and several companies with similar names (Girotto Brevetti appears to be his primary company). A few of their listings are here under his name: https://patents.justia.com/inventor/adriano-girotto
Wait what, that's what they are doing? But instead of large diameter rotors over sheets of copper, they're using 3" wide bars of carbon steel, which has at least 10x the electrical resistance?
Making a 20 ton car levitate like that will take absurd amounts of power. Think about it, if they tilt those rotors forward, they could use the same effect to create forward thrust. That's how the skateboard can accelerate. If you apply 20 tons of thrust to a 20 ton train wagon, it will accelerate - by definition - to its terminal velocity in air. Which should be hundreds of mph.
So, a train like this levitating statically over its rails would draw the same amount of power - at minimum, ignoring all resistive heating in the rails! - as a train going hundreds of miles per hour in air.
Yes, they are using permanent magnets according to this page:
Also:
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Cool tech! For reference, 70 km/h is about 43 mph. That is actually pretty close to the speed of many commuter rail and metro systems. I wonder if this could first see utility in local networks. One of the benefits of maglev technology is that it potentially has faster acceleration/deceleration times than conventional rail. Because metro/commuter rail tends to make a lot of stops, there's opportunity here for a system that can accelerate and decelerate more quickly, even if it's not getting up to crazy high speeds.
A subset of that use-case would be "light rail" systems which can (sometimes) have less weighty traincars than "heavy rail" systems on a per-car basis (due to being physically shorter), as they don't go very fast if they're street-running and make frequent local stops.
I'm interested to see if they can get speeds higher than conventional heavy rail running on typical inter-city lines (150+ km/h or 90+ mph). If so, this has much utility for longer distance travel. But even if the maximum speed is lower than the max speed of conventional rail, improved acceleration/deceleration times could possibly make up the difference, depending on the route.
Obviously the real benefit of maglev is ultra high-speed rail. However, reducing noise and vibrations is also a big deal if it means less wear and tear on the tracks and potentially simpler train designs. It could also provide quality of life benefits to people living near railways.
The main question I have is how much this technology would cost to deploy at scale, but judging from the small scope of the demonstration, I don't think there's an answer to this yet. Regardless, it's pretty cool.
From another article:
For reference, the weight of a fully loaded Acela train is about 623 US tons (565 metric tons). The weight of a single passenger car is about 70 US tons (63 metric tons). Lifting 10 (metric?) tons using such little power (apparently) is pretty impressive, but it's still a ways off from real-world utility. However, if they can actually put together a model that lifts 20 tons at that speed (which is faster than most conventional rail) within a short period of time, my hype levels would go up.
Reuters says that they want to get their next prototype out the door "in a couple of years." If they can get to 30 or 40 US tons (27 to 36 metric tons), this starts having real-world potential for some light rail systems.
When ready for commercial production, I assume that IronLev would license their technology to more established trainset manufacturers, but producing an actual train based on it could easily take a decade, depending on how complicated it is and how it needs to be integrated into other proprietary electronic systems. I foresee many manufacturing issues there. But if it requires no changes to the track, that's a huge benefit and could totally revolutionize the industry—if, and only if, the cost of the maglev addition on the traincar is not obscenely expensive.
Unfortunately it seems there's not a lot about it on the web other than from the company itself?
I wonder about safety.
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What aspects of safety are you concerned about? Possibility of derailment?
Maglev, in general, has been safely demonstrated in the past. It is in use on various passenger lines already. The fastest train in the world, the Chūō Shinkansen, uses SCMaglev technology which has exhibited a top speed of 603 km/h (375 mph). That particular one isn't running passenger service yet, but it exists.
It isn't clear to me if IronLev's technology is less stable than SCMaglev tech. I just don't know enough about maglev to comment on that.
Well, sure, but the way I see it is that it's a different system, so other companies' experiences with different maglev systems doesn't tell us much about this one.
I'm looking for how this works at all, on a physical level. How do you levitate over an extremely weak ferromagnet like a piece of steel track (without using a diamagnet like bismuth or a superconductor, because both are much to expensive for comercial rail)? How do you achieve static stability? How do you achieve dynamic stability?
Or simpler: how does the train float at all? If it floats, why doesn't it fall of the track? How does it keep following the track once it moves?
All existing maglev trains work completely differently, they use strong magnets on all 4 sides of a special monorail. I see how it works if the rail is strongly ferromagnetic and you can get part of the train "under" it. But normal train tracks are not strongly ferromagnetic, and you can only put magnets on 3 sides of it.