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Maglev technologies have been extensively studied for modern transport systems; however, their main applications are limited to transportation systems with fixed tracks. On-road vehicles could have a broader outlook if combined with maglev technologies, for which electrodynamic wheels (EDWs) have provided a possible solution. Conventional EDWs are designed based on permanent magnets (PMs), which generate limited thrust and lift forces while having a low power density. In order to enhance the feasibility of EDWs in maglev vehicles, a novel design of EDWs based on high-temperature superconducting (HTS) Halbach array magnets (HAMs) has been proposed in this paper. The suggested design is made of the second generation (2G) superconducting coils, which have been modeled with the A-formulation and T-formulation based finite element methods. Simulation results show that the proposed HTS HAM EDW can generate higher thrust and lift forces, improve the magnetic flux density distribution in the airgap, and greatly reduce the weight of the magnets compared with the conventional design. This paper provides a possibility for future on-road maglev vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless power transfer (WPT) for electric vehicles (EVs), also known as wireless charging, is a fast-developing technology with many advantages over conventional cable charging. Novel materials such as high temperature superconductors (HTS) can be used to increase system performance. However, HTS coils have high ac losses at wireless charging frequencies (10–100 kHz) and this is crucial for WPT systems. Flux diverters have been used in the past for dc and low frequency (∼50 Hz) superconducting applications but their effectiveness at high frequencies is unexplored. This article investigates the impact of flux diverters on HTS double pancake coils operating at high frequencies up to 85 kHz, commonly used for wireless charging of EVs. Various geometric characteristics of flux diverters are investigated such as air gap between diverter and coil, thickness, and width. A 2-D axisymmetric multilayer model using finite element analysis was used to examine the coil and diverter losses at such frequencies and different load factors (LFs) between 0.1 and 0.8. It is demonstrated that flux diverters are a viable option to reduce the coil losses even at high frequencies and the width of the flux diverter has the biggest impact on the loss reduction. In general, flux diverters are more suitable for applications using high LFs. Lastly, the impact of the diverter in terms of magnetic field distribution above the coil and overall loss distribution in the HTS coil was examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]