Hyperloop firm licenses passive magnetic levitation technology system

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) announced yesterday that it had exclusively licensed passive magnetic levitation technology to power its prototype hyperloop system. 

The hyperloop aims to transport humans and goods in a vacuum tube system at speeds up to 750 mph.

The announcement comes only two days ahead of rival Hyperloop Technologies Inc (HTI) planning to showcase the evolution of its technology to investors and  media in the desert north of Las Vegas.

Hyperloop Technologies' website features photos and videos showing off large tubes housing long pods for either people or cargo. Both HTI and HTT are Los Angeles based companies.

Another player skyTran, located at NASA Research Park, south of San Francisco,  recently unveiled a technology demonstration system showcasing how its two- and four-person vehicles would work. It plans to build a 30-mile track in Lagos, Nigeria. skyTran which is in partnership with Nasa, has raised $30 million.

The hyperloop works on the same operating principle, magnetic levitation, as high speed trains in Europe and Japan. According to commentators, the hyperloop would face the same infrastructure and regulatory hurdles that high-speed rail projects and autonomous cars have to address.

In its statement yesterday, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies said its design would tackle safety concerns with a passive levitation system, which would eliminate the need for power stations along the Hyperloop track and keep construction costs low.

"From a safety aspect, the system has huge advantages, levitation occurs purely through movement, therefore if any type of power failure occurs, Hyperloop pods would continue to levitate and only after reaching minimal speeds touch the ground," said Bibop Gresta, chief operating officer of Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, said.

According to commentators, the technology developed by the physicist Richard Post at Lawrence Livemore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California in the 1990s, could be an elegant solution if it could work here.

Levitation is key to the development of the Hyperloop, since the concept's theoretically borderline supersonic speeds are based on the idea of eliminating as much friction as possible, which meant running the pods in a near vacuum to reduce air resistance, and zooming along above a track instead of on it.

Passive maglev works whenever the vehicle is in motion. The system, which Livermore named Inductrack, uses permanent magnet arrays on the vehicle, which create and electric and therefore a magnetic field when they move over the conductive arrays in the track.

That field pushes the vehicle up clear off the track. In the self-stabilizing system: if the pod rises too high, the force weakens, and the pod drops back to the optimal level.