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 levi-tation 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.