Velocity Estimation on an Active Suspension for a Translational Electrodynamic Maglev System

The concept of Hyperloop was proposed over a decade ago. Since then, numerous efforts have focused on improving this technology towards commercial applications. Although promising, the electrodynamic levitation system is inherently unstable. However, instability can be mitigated by the introduction of a secondary suspension between the capsule and the bogie. To evaluate stabilization strategies, a dedicated test bench has been constructed. Nevertheless, these methods require a reliable estimation of the relative velocity between the capsule and the bogie for their successful practical implementation. This work focuses on the estimation of this velocity using a Kalman filter approach based on an augmented model of the electrical circuit of a voice coil actuator, which constitutes the secondary suspension of the presented electrodynamic levitation system. The proposed approach has been implemented and tested on a real-time ECU, demonstrating the capability of the method for applications involving active damping control.