Future of Maglev in the US Military

The Hippy of Death writes "An article at The Weekly Standard discusses the current maglev research being funded by the US military. From the article: 'But what if you could drastically reduce the amount of noise a ship makes directly at the source? ...Vibration & Sound Solutions Limited suggested placing mag-lev sensors at the source of the electromagnetic fields, such as motors. The idea was to actually levitate the machinery with an array of electromagnets while using a small amount of power.'"

Re:Reduce friction?

[JanneM]

Magnetic bearings already exist and are in use. They're not without problems, though (not quite as stable as mechanical ones, and not able to take high radial loads). Also, good mechanical berings are already very efficient; it's not like you have a lot of efficiency gains to make.

Submitter should RTFA

[shadow_slicer]

The submitter didn't even get to the second page.
This technology was originally designed to dampen mechanical vibration in ships like the submitter said, but the Navy wasn't interested (probably because while that would be useful in a cold war, it's not too helpful in the war on terror).

What they're doing now, is using to cushion seats. The article claims some of the speedier boats they use to put marines ashore can pull 8Gs hopping over waves. So they use this technology along with wave height sensors and a fast processor to reduce it to 2-3Gs. Although this sounds new, it's basically the same technique as those active noise cancellation headphones only for lower frequencies and higher amplitudes.

Then the company is trying to expand by putting this into other vehicles like humvees and helicopters. (why in a helicopter?)

How about magnetic bearings?

[ZombieEngineer]

The problem of using Maglev on the motors is that the torque that is generated. It isn't as simple as lifting the weight of several tonnes but also apply the rotational torque as well (normally this is less that the wieght of the motor for conventional drives but high power units with hydrogen gas cooling [best thermal conductivity] could increase this force to multiples of the static wieght).

Re:You are a coward

[stupidfoo]

I know fools like you typically fail at math and logic and also rarely have a firm grasp on reality. Analyzing the actual dollars spent is worthless. What's important is $ per capita and as a percentage of a countries total GDP.

Measured as $ per capita the US is #3 (behind Israel and Singapore):
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/mil_exp_dol_fi g_percap [nationmaster.com]

Measured as a percentage of GDP the US is #36:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2034rank.html [cia.gov]

Random countries that spend more (as a % of the GDP): Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Singapore, China, Greece, Chile, Egypt

US Defense spending as percent of GDP [d-n-i.net] from 1940-2000.

But I'm sure whatever you've learned in school (in whatever country you're from) doesn't cover these sort of things. Your ignorant leftist teachers just point out the the US is evil because it spends more money than other countries, as if that has a thread of logic to it.

Re:Doesn't make sense...

[Anonymous Coward]

How the hell is China closer to the US than Germany!?

Distance from Shanghai to LA: 6438 miles.
Distance from Berlin to NYC: 3965 miles.
Source [infoplease.com]

Magnetic bearings for rotating machinery are real

[Animats]

SKF, a leading bearing manufacturer, makes magnetic bearings for rotating machinery. [skf.com] These are commercial products in use now.

They're useful in situations where lubrication is difficult or the lubricant has to be sealed away from the environment. Clean rooms, vacuum systems, food and drug processing, cyrogenics, and pressurized gases qualify. They're also useful for large diameter bearings.

These things look and work much like an electric motor. They're not that exotic.