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What is a Linear Motor
This can be defined as an electric motor that has experienced an unroll for its stator and rotor, and therefore is forced to produce a linear force across its length rather than producing a torque. You might be a little bit surprised to find our that the linear motor isn’t straight because linear motors are not always straight. This is just because it doesn’t necessarily need to be straight and devices that it is used to do not always need a straight linear motor. One of its good characteristics is that it has got ends in its active sections, and this makes it unique from other conventional motors that are arranged in the form of a continuous loop. The linear motor is popularly used in many devices worldwide, but its most common use is the famous Lorenzo-type actuator. When it is used in this actuator, you could discover that the force applied is linearly proportional to the magnetic field and the current. Because of the many designs that are done to modify the linear motor, it has been relatively grouped into two different categories. These two categories are explained below;
– Low Acceleration Linear Motors
This type of linear motors are known to be used commonly for ground-based transport applications, a good example is the maglev train. This is often longer than the high acceleration linear motor. As the name goes, the low acceleration linear motor is known for slow and not too fast performance. It is more preferable in some applications than a high acceleration linear motor. They are mostly found in basic or domestic machines and doesn’t require much energy to work.
– High Acceleration Linear Motor
This type of linear motors is known to be short and can accelerate objects or machines to a very high speed. These machines would perform very faster and deliver more services. A good example of its application is in a coil gun. In some other applications, the high acceleration linear motors could be used in a practical study of hypervelocity collisions, they are also used as weapons, and they are also a good speed accelerator in mass drivers that are used in spacecraft propulsion. The high acceleration linear motor is very difficult in designing it for a specific number of reasons. The main reason is that they make use of a large amount of energy in a very little time.
Linear Induction Motor
The linear induction motor shows how a field conductor is acted upon by moving a linear magnetic field to produce a force. This is designed to work in such a way that any conductor, maybe a coil or any piece of metal plate, made to stay in this field will have eddy currents induced, thereby leading to the creation of a magnetic opposing field. This opposing magnetic field is just according to what Lenz’s law states.
Usage Of The Linear Motor
There are many uses of linear motors that might not have known, and we’d take our time to outline them for you. They uses are as follows ;
- In the automobile industry, the linear motor has been used in diverse ways, but really good use of it is in the acceleration of cars for crash tests.
- Linear motions have been used genuinely in the creation of rotary motion. A good example of this application is in the use of observatories to handle a great or big radius of curvature.
- Linear motors have been used for lots of actuators, especially sliding doors and other similar processes.
- In all the useful applications of a linear motor, one common use of it is to propel the shuttle in looms.
- The linear motor has lots of uses when we talk about aircraft launching. Almost all the major parts of an aircraft of a space shuttle have a linear motor feature.
- Another good use of a linear motor is in magnetic levitation. This application fully has to do with trains and their mode of operation. Therefore, you can decide to say that linear motors can be used in train propulsion.
These few uses clearly show how a linear motor is important. Be sure to visit Intellidrives for more information about linear motors.