I was considering a system made from a stack of electromagnetically levitated platforms and wondering how you would go about comparing its tensile (and or compressive) strength to that of a solid material.
There is a similar question and answer here but it is scant on details:
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/250746/tensile-strength-of-a-chain-of-electromagnets
I'm interested in whether it be 'practical' to make a structure with a tensile strength similar or better than say steel in this way? or a strength to density ratio better than a conventional material.
I think this is the same question as asking what strength of magnetic field would be required to tear a material apart.
On that basis:
Q1 For a given platform size what stength of field is would be required to create a 'joint' at least as strong as if a solid steel bar was used instead?
Q2 What current would be needed to power the coil?
I'm presuming it would have a 'base' level and increase current draw as strain increased up to some maximum beyond which something fails - the coil burns out or we cut the power and let the platform drop.
Is such a field readily achievable? I think we can generate a few 10s of Telsas in NMR scanners.
Assuming our best current efficiency how much power would such a device consume per platform at maximum stress?
My thinking so far
So for this thought experiment consider a tensometer (or other device used to evaluate the tensile strength of a material (as in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tensile_testing) but which does so using electromagnetic repulsion rather than a more common mechanical or hydraulic systrem.
For the tensometer the magnetic field could be distributed in the area around the sample so I think it is a workable design if not efficient.
Returning to the stack of platforms the same force would have to be concentrated into the area of the sample. I wonder if it might need to be so strong it would tear apart the materials that would be used to construct the platforms.
The power requirements would presumably be horrendous too.
I'd like to see an answer of this quality https://engineering.stackexchange.com/a/37923/19065
I wonder also if you usefully make an existing structure weaker or stronger using such a mechanism. Think "polarize the hull plating".
I am assuming that each platform is an active component. They either generate power themselves or have power fed to them by wire or induction from the fields being used to support them. They stabilize the platform above dynamically as in any number of examples on the net (e.g https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=magnetic+levitation)
Note: the mechanism is allowed to use diamagnetism (ie. superconductors). It need not rely entirely on electromagnets.
Further I'm assuming the design aims to constrain the fields as far as possible so that energy is focused on levitation via shielding and coupling effects.
Shielding is also necessary so that anything at the top or in an elevator to reach it (e.g. a person) would not be fried.
Thinking this way would it be possible to construct something that has a greater strength to weight ratio than the equivalent solid material would have.
Thinking about practical (though not necessarily sensible) applications consider:
- A magnetic levitating telescopic ladder
- A magnetic levitating car jack
These of course do not need the tensile strength of steel they only need to support the weight of a person or a car so getting a bit more sci-fi consider:
- A tripod
- A cloud city
- A space elevator - taking this idea to the extreme (I believe the current estimate is we would need a tensile strength of around 150GPa for such a structure)
I'm thinking that we need to derive something like magnetic pressure to match the units used for tensile strengths of materials. That page has one equation for force an a coil with resistance in the denominator. For a superconductor that would tend to zero, so I assume that must break down somewhere or be otherwise inapplicable. The other equation giving the pressure as proportional to the square of the field sounds more applicable.
A major practical obstacle is that magnetic fields follow a cube law rather than a square law so even more power is required to produce a strong one. But I'm not if this would affect the power requirements significantly.
