Development of magnetic force modeling equipment for magnetic levitation system

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a modeling equipment that obtains every equilibrium point of a magnetic levitation system automatically. To obtain every equilibrium point, we develop an automatic modeling equipment that measures the magnetic force exerted on the levitation object, the coil current of electromagnet, and the distance between the levitation object and the electromagnet. The modeling equipment is composed of two parts : the load cell equipment and the control board. The load cell equipment measures the magnetic force by a load cell and maintains certain position between the levitation object and electromagnet. The control board controls the voltage applied to the electromagnet and the position of load cell, and measures magnetic force, distance between the levitation object and electromagnet, and the coil current of electromagnet. An automatic algorithm for making a 2D lookup table from the experimentally measured data is proposed. Because a 2D lookup table reflects every equilibrium point, it is valid for various mass of levitation objects and the controller can be designed using the 2D lookup table without any further experiment.