Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
Published by the MIT News Office at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, Mass.
TWO PROJECTS Magnetic Levitation Gets Boost BY Robert C. Di Iorio News Office MIT's already prominent role in the effort to develop a national magnetically levitated high-speed ground transportation system (maglev) has grown even larger. Two of the four industry-led teams that received federal National Maglev Initiative contracts last week include MIT researchers and students at the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES), Lincoln Laboratory and the MIT Plasma Fusion Center (PFC). The principal investigators at MIT are Professor Richard D. Thornton of the Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems (LEES) for the team headed by Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco and Dr. D. Bruce Montgomery of the PFC and Dr. Charles W. Haldeman of Lincoln Laboratory for the team headed by Magneplane International, Inc. of Wayland, Mass. Professor David N. Wormley, associate dean of the School of Engineering and a researcher in this field for many years, will be an active member of the team headed by Professor Thornton. Professor Wormley is principal investigator on a separate maglev technology project funded by the Federal Railroad Administration. The announcement came just a few days before the November 7 start of the MIT Maglev Seminars series that will continue into the spring semester. The opening seminar, at 4pm in Rm 34-101, will be delivered by Professor Thornton and Dr. Henry H. Kolm, president of Magneplane International, for many years a researcher and one of the founders of the Francis Bitter National Magnet Laboratory here. Dr. Montgomery, associate director of the PFC, will moderate the November 21 seminar. The newly announced projects, in addition to four already underway here, mean that MIT has received more than $1 million in federal maglev funding. That is far more than any other university or company, according to Professor Thornton. Massachusetts, with MIT, several companies and the Volpe National Transportation System Center involved, "is way ahead of any other state. New England and New York totally dominate the maglev R&D effort," he said. Each of the four newly funded teams will assess the technical feasibility, performance and cost for a system that could be available in about nine years-the year 2000. Professor Thornton and Dr. Kolm are pursuing different concepts and they will explain them at the November 7 seminar. Professor Thornton's subject will be "Comparison of Transrapid with Japanese and MIT Electrodynamic Suspension (EDS) Designs." Dr. Kolm's subject is "The Magneplane System." Professor Thornton will argue that the most important advantage of an EDS design is its potential for higher performance at lower cost. There is, he says, a surprisingly large commonality in all present and proposed maglev system designs, and the United States can greatly shorten the development time for a new system by taking advantage of existing electromagnetic suspension (EMS) technology. He will seek to show in his talk why EDS is a lower cost approach and how the US development can be accelerated by selective borrowing from the German EMS maglev effort. Dr. Kolm will describe the Magneplane system which is designed to achieve continuous traffic flow similar to a highway, rather than the batch flow process of railroads. Magneplane, he says, uses magnetic levitation to gain two crucial advantages: 1) individually targeted vehicles can operate safely at 20-second headways and stop at off-line stations without slowing other traffic; 2) vehicles are supported resiliently at a six-inch clearance and are free to self bank in turns like airplanes. The National Maglev Initiative is an interagency partnership and last week's funding announcement was made jointly by Federal Railroad Administrator Gil Carmichael and Assistant Secretary of the Army (civil works) Nancy P. Dorn. The Bechtel-led group received $1,769,776. The group includes Hughes Aircraft, General Motors, Draper Laboratory and MIT. It will explore repulsive superconducting levitation and a box beam girder guideway. The Magneplane International group received $2,676,610. The group includes the MIT Plasma Fusion Center, Lincoln Laboratory, Raytheon, and others. It will develop repulsive superconducting magnets with a semicircular guideway that permits self-banking. A group led by Grumman Corp. of Bethpage, Long Island, will receive $2,474,108 to explore attractive levitation using superconducting magnets and a V-shaped guideway. A team led by Foster-Miller, Inc., of Waltham, received $1,712,582 to investigate repulsive superconducting levitation and integration of lift, guidance and propulsion functions.