Chapter 3　Magnetic Levitation

Jia-Su Wang and Su-Yu Wang

Levitation and suspension have been for centuries associated with psychic and strange phenomena in which an object occupies a fixed position in a gravitational field without any direct physical contact. The interaction between objects in this suspended state will not bring friction, energy loss, and heat generation at the interface.Magnetic levitation refers to the suspension phenomenon associated with a magnetic field.The characteristic is a suspension phenomenon without direct contact between the object and the magnetic sources.Magnetic levitation is abbre viated as Maglev.Maglev is a general term, but in some cases it is often thought to refer to the Maglev train.This is perhaps due to the influence of these applica tions in the field of traffic.In this book, we use the following definition, as not to cause unnecessary confusion.The term"Maglev"maintains its original meaning.It can be used as an attributive to define other specialized magnetic levitation, for example, Maglev train, Maglev bearing, etc.In this book the first letter of Maglev is capitalized.