Maglev Wheels???

[Creator]

OK if you guys know that The maglev train moves on magnetic levitation but I wonder if this process can be reversed... in such a way.

I was thinking that this method may make a lot of things faster.... like Tankers?

Well those blocks can be the tracks of a tanker for example propelled by magnetic leviatation like the Maglev train.

Look I am just a fic writer but I want my readers or audience to believe that this tech might work..... So a bit of reality is still needed

I know it sounds crazy But if this thing can run... it can do a lot of things like say having a few motors running you have just one stretch of maglev track with the tanker treaded being magnetised and propelling forward.

I just need someone to see if the concept still works or if it is to work then what modifications to be done.

 

[Nik]

Sorry, the link went to a log-in page...

Um, 'tanker', you mean track-laying vehicles like back-hoe / 'dozer or sno-cat ??

Well, yes and no: Yes, because linear motor will drive slides or conveyor belt, even shove appropriate material through pipe. Tech is un-wrapped cousin to both the stepper motor in CD player or hard-drive and 'electronically commutated' brushless DC motors.

Snags are torque and efficiency. Edge-effects and air-gap losses rise *horribly* with any clearance for eg dirt. For specialist applications, the cost is worthwhile-- IIRC, one app is pumping liquid metal !! If the machinery is big enough, gap and edge losses are reduced to 'tolerable'. For our scale, rotary electric motors, gears and hydraulics are still much more efficient...

( Check out drag-line mining tech... ; - )

FWIW, 'pancake' motors can be integrated into the support wheels you'll need for those caterpillar tracks...

 

[ray gower]

Think what you are asking has been deployed on pretty well every 'hover car' in science fiction since Flash Gordon.

The concept of Maglev is that it neutralises the weight of the object, the left hand law (?) of magnetics then allows the whole thing to be drawn forward, though you could equally jump out and give it a good shove. The wheels are simply there to stop it hitting the ground and pushing it out the way when it breaks.

There is no reason, beyond the requirement for great gobs of power, why the magnetic fields cannot be produced on board the vehicle. Get the magnetic field generated strong enough and you would not need a track at all!

The practical science is that the whole lot uses so much more power than using wheels and an engine it is not worth the effort. The bigger the load the less the viability.

What have been used experimentally in tracked vehicles are linear motors. Instead of having rotors whirring around as in a traditional motor the whole thing is flattened out flat. It is not (yet) a fast propulsion method but has been developed into a solid-state drive making it ideal for use in otherwise hazardous areas.

Ultimately though, for science fiction, it is your job as the writer to convince me that it all works, no matter how ludicrous

 

[Creator]

Here my concept art... so-called

Don't ask how is it going to attach to the track.... I will do that..... but it should move like a Maglev train except faster right??

 

[ray gower]

Still don't see what you hope to gain.

Tracks are not ideal for moving anything fast and Maglev counters gravitational effects, giving whatever is in its field buoyancy. The propulsion is more of a side-effect, there is no real motive power; Something that has no weight is easy to push.

Where you might be able to use the concept is to use your tracks as carriers and placing heavy delicate loads (think 1000s of tonnes) between them on a Maglev field. It occurs to me if that were done you would effectively have over half the mass outside of ground effect i.e. it would halve the load on the ground, allowing huge loads to be transported where they couldn't normally (over bridges, sand etc). That would speed things up relative to using millions of wheels and hovercraft air cushions which we do now. In theory you could move oil tankers of the sea going variety over dry land without them breaking up that way. That would be something interesting to watch going through the Channel Tunnel?

 

[Creator]

Errr sorry I still don't understand....

if it can move a train that is over thousand pounds, it can also move treads that can carry a tank in this style... and will it be faster? It's speed I am looking for... a Maglev Train can so fast..... well if you apply this tech to well to what I was talking about in this topic.... it should work right but faster??

And yes it maybe able to propel maybe a bike's wheel perhaps without the center rod? I will draw more and let the science geeks here think about it tmr.....

I have got my tale's character wield maglev weapons that can punch a hole thru the armour of the bad guys or the hull of the ship or a sub.... and those weapons are at Mach 5 and above... it's done in reality but not portray enough in science fiction.

 

[ray gower]

Think I may be catching up with you.
Your gun is what is commonly called a Railgun.
It uses an intense unstable (moving) magnetic pulse to propel a small pellet at trans-sonic speeds. The pellet has to be small and light for the magnetic pulse to overcome the inertia and pick it up. It is effectively the other side of the formula for Magnetic Levitation. You are trading mass for velocity. 99% of the energy is put into giving the small pellet the velocity to cause destruction.

Maglev attempts to neutralise the effects of gravity by holding a mass inside a static magnetic field.

Think of surf boarding, you paddle around ages looking for just the right wave and then try and keep just ahead of the crest for the maximum speed. You would not expect a 60,000 tonne liner to potter around 'pore harbour waiting to catch a wave to take it to Perth.

So we have a static field (Maglev) for supporting a load and a linear one (railgun) for making small things go very fast. Linear motors (another rearrangement of the same formula) can move moderate loads at moderate speeds and as observed the moving armature for that can be incorporated in a tank track. But it's ultimate ability to draw a load is limited to how big you can get the magnetic pulse so as to draw the armature and there are physical limits to that.

 

[chrispenycate]

Although I was in the wrong department to have Laithwaite (the inventor of the linear accelerator) as a professor, I was in the right university at the right time, (and built my own linear accelerator out of plastic drainpipe and TV deflection coils) The speed of the conductor depends on the spacing of the coils, and the frequency of the polyphase electric current, and there is a substancial tendency for the conductor to remain in the centre of the magnetic field, making it simultaneously a magnetic bearing and a drive system. Unfortunately for driving caterpillar tracks, the coil must completely surround the conductor (in this case, the metallic track) meaning that the bit at the bottom, where all the weight is applied, would have to have conventional bearings or an indirect drive, nullifying almost all of the advantages (particularly as tracks tend to be the first things to give up on vehicles using them, rather than motor bearings)
If you tried (answering someone else) to lift a reasonable wieght vehicle using the Earth's magnetic field, the currents you would need would be so enormous (you'd need superconducting coils, for a start) that they would be hazardous to unscreened lifeforms at several tens of metres; and the thing would drag in ferrous metals from hundreds of metres. Turn it on, and it would be like a cartoon, with cutlery flying in from all sides to stick itself to your magnetic shielding And even if you got a conductive roadbed, and got the thing off the surface, you'd have the same problem as with air-cushion vehicles; wide steering and slow braking. Works for trains, not for trucks. An intelligent road co-operating with an intelligent vehicle? Maybe, but I wouldn't put money on it.
And any of these solutions requires plentiful, cheap energy; they're not going to be ultra efficient.
You can actually feel a magnetic field generated by a few thousand amps; it induces currents into your nerve fibres. I suspect these devices are looking at two or three orders of magnitude greater than this, and leakage - well, don't go near one with a pacemaker, or anything electronic; this is close to a continuous EMP.

 

[Nik]

Hi, there's also an upper limit to track-laying vehicles' speed because of the tension in the links.

You shove track around faster & faster, it tries to adopt a circular shape. It wants to be a wheel. Snag is your track-print needs to be flat, your linear motor is flat, your sprockets are tightly curved. You got a lot of momentum, a heap of loading on the sprockets and hinges, the potential for a near-explosion if a link fails...

Think high-speed 'chain drive' on machinery...

More scary, think of the problems of land-speed vehicles' wheels-- The fastest are solid metal, as anything flexible will so fly apart !!

Also, a subtle point-- Action & Reaction are still equal & opposite. You're pushing down, the floor gotta take that push. Look at 'air skates' for shifting heavy loads. The floor still carries all the weight, but you smear out the point-loading, save on tyres, bearings, crabbing steering, ackerman angles etc etc.

Whatever you do, if a bridge is rated 100 tons SWL, and your load is entirely supported by that bridge --air cushion, mag-lev, track-laying or many wheeled-- it better be within the rating...

 

[Creator]

I see... but about my diagram, the maglev tanker tread might still work right? and also for circular tracks I was thinking that if this do not work for a tanker tread style maybe circular would be better...

 

[Nik]

Hi, could you clarify what you mean by 'tanker' ??

Containerised ISO 'bottles', 20, 30 or 40 feet a lift ??

LASH barges ?

Panamax ?

Or 'megatonners' ??

 

[Creator]

Tanker....

 

[iansales]

That's a tank, not a tanker

If each link of the track is separate and held in magnetic suspension.. and then accelerated forward by phasing the current in the magnetic coils... the uppermost section of the track would hold together. But once each link moved onto the forward edge of the track, it would fall out of the magnetic field and onto the ground. And if it did make it to the bottom of the track, it'd just be left on the ground as the tank moved forwards.

So no, I don't think your idea will work.

 

[Rawled Demha]

lol, yeah, a tanker is normally a container for fluids...i think

 

[iansales]

So are tanks. And battle tanks are so called because when they were being developed they were referred to as "water carriers" to keep their purpose secret.

 

[Rawled Demha]

/me punches hisself in the head for being so stupid

so tanks are.

interesting about the codename though, i never knew that.

 

[Creator]

Silly me too... maybe maglev tracks cannot be used in this way.... or does anyone have a solution to this problem.....

Hover tanks on a cushion of air? whatathink?

Or ok... maybe this maglev wheels cannot work on a tank tread or maybe something round rather than elongated...? MAybe this can be used to drive.... well blades of a turbo fan or a duct fan minus the center rod to drive it....

 

[Nik]

Edge drive...

Um, if you put the impeller blades inside a ring, you could wrap a motor around the outside...

Snag is the middle of the blades don't move fast to be useful, so you gotta blank them off. May as well put the motor there, have something to attach axle to...

But, put vanes on outside of ring, wrap motor inside that, slide the vehicle inside *that*, you got possibilities.
---

IIRC, propelling a MainBattleTank or other AFV is a grim trade-off. The US turbine powered Abrahms is considered an oddity, everyone else has gone for diesel. Um, probably perhaps a heavy-duty diesel can quaff anything from cooking oil upwards-- Albeit at reduced efficiency.

A snag with hover vehicles is they get better as they get bigger. Look at US' air-cushion amphibious landers, and the UK's *HUGE* SRN cross-Channel designs. The latter retired when Chunnel opened. I've crossed the Channel once by hovercraft, and it was a wild ride. Okay, the weather was *vile*, the regular ferries were delayed and the SRN cut across the infamous Goodwin Sands --We could see sand between the waves !!-- but a 50% bigger craft would have ridden smooth and level...

And even a hovercraft that big could only carry a couple of tanks...

A individual armoured 'Tank' of familiar size is too small for the air-cushion needed to support it, or to carry the engines to fill the air-cushion.

Hmm, for militarised hover-craft used in scouting and light attack role, look at opening to 'James Bond' movie, 'Die Another Day'.

An armoured hovercraft would need to be ten, twenty, fifty times bigger to carry significant armour, to bridge obstacles. It would sound like a Space Shuttle launch and would be a Very Big Juicy Target.

Also, for obstacle clearance, a hover-tank needs enough power-to-weight to *fly* over anything it can't bull through...

SciFi-style hover-tanks have fusion power and multiple lift-fan nacelles--- Or enough AntiGrav to lift a small starship...
---

Please, keep looking: You gotta neat idea, you just need the right problem for it to solve...

 

[Creator]

I am thankful for the support.... but now I am looking up on ekranoplans or ground in effect craft... It appears that they fly close to the ground like hover tanks... just add a turret or two and you get a hover tank....

 

[StewHotston]

well, as long as you don't care about recoil