2016 Volume 3 Issue 6 Pages 15-00376
Nowadays, thin steel plates with high surface quality are required. However, the quality of steel plates is adversely affected by transport using the friction force generated by contact with rollers in the manufacturing process. As a solution to this problem, the non-contact transport of steel plates using an electromagnetic force has been proposed. When a steel plate has sufficient stiffness owing to its material or size, it can be levitated by a levitation system consisting of actuators installed in the vertical direction. On the other hand, it is difficult for very thin steel plates to levitate because of the deflection at locations where an attractive force is not applied. To improve the levitation performance of the conventional magnetic levitation system, we have proposed the addition of an electromagnet to control the horizontal displacement of the steel plate. However, there have been no detailed examinations of by how much the levitation stability of a steel plate is improved by the suppression of deflection. In this study, we obtained the shape of a levitated steel plate by electromagnetic field analysis and deformation analysis and evaluated the obtained shape of the steel plate. Furthermore, a levitation experiment was performed to verify the levitation stability of this system. The results show that the addition of an electromagnet in the horizontal direction is effective for achieving stable levitation.
