Numerical Modeling of the Thomson Ring in Stationary Levitation Using FEM-Electrical Network and Newton-Raphson

Resumen

There are a lot of applications of the Thomson ring: levitation of superconductor materials, power interrupters (used as actuator) and elimination of electric arcs. Therefore, it is important the numerical modeling of Thomson ring. The aim of this work is to model the stationary levitation of the Thomson ring. This Thomson ring consists of a copper coil with ferromagnetic core and an aluminum ring threaded in the core. The coil is fed by a cosine voltage to ensure that the aluminum ring is in a stationary levitated position. In this situation, the state of the electromagnetic field is stable and can be used the phasor equations of the electromagnetic field. These equations are discretized using the Galerkin method in the Lagrange base space (finite element method, FEM). These equations are solved using the COMSOL software. A methodology is also described (which uses the Newton-Raphson method) that obtains the separation between coil and aluminum ring. The numerical solutions of this separation are compared with experimental data. The conclusion is that the magnetic coupling of the aluminum ring on the coil can be neglected if the source voltage is high