The National Maglev Technology R&D Center (NMTC) has been doing research on low-speed maglev technologies since 2005. The Shanghai low-speed maglev test line was built in July 2006 with a total length of 2.0 kilometers. During the layout of the test line, situations that may arise in engineering practice were taken into account. For the guideway system, different types of structures for the main line and the vehicle maintenance line, of different spans, were produced and erected. From 2006 to 2010, numerous tests have been systematically conducted on the line, covering all sub-systems. According to experiences from the Shanghai high-speed maglev line, dynamic response of the guideway structure may have a great influence on the stable running of a maglev vehicle. During these tests, dynamic responses of different types of girders and track skeletons wee recorded and analyzed, including accelerations, displacements and stresses. The responses of different parts of the guideway switch were also taken in order to make evaluations and find its weakness to guide further optimization. Through these analyses, some instructive suggestions for the design of guideway structures were acquired.

Research on low-speed maglev technology has been conducted for more than thirty years in China. After years of efforts to bring it into operation, decision-makers of Beijing's government made up their minds to initiate the building of the S1 line at the end of last year. The feasibility study of Urban Transit Line 8, adopting this system in Shenzhen city, is also near completion. Undoubtedly, a low-speed maglev system is very promising for its lower noise, better climbing capacity and ability to negotiate smaller radius curves as compared with a wheel-rail system. However, there are still many challenges with regard to using this system in densely built urban areas due to the lack of space for system arrangement. Based on experiences from the Tobu Kyuryo low-speed line, the Shanghai high-speed maglev line and low-speed maglev test line, this work summarized problems to be solved for a low-speed maglev system to build a more "compact" system in such areas. This study was concerned with continuing system optimization - including the selection of guideway structures, the strategy for vehicle stopping, and inspection and maintenance which determine the configuration of facilities - in order to increase the efficiency of space and land use.

This article describes the different types of the guideway inspecting technologies developed for the Shanghai maglev demonstration line. For safety and riding comfort, it is important - during both construction and daily operations - to inspect or measure the different deviations of the guideway regularly. However, it is impossible to do the job manually because of the short maintenance window time, the high accuracy requirement and the long distance. Therefore, the National Maglev Transportation Engineering R & D Center (NMTC) has developed a series of guideway inspection technologies and equipment - like Automatic Inspection Equipment (AIE), Long-wave deviation Detection System (LDS), Stator Inspection Equipment (SIE), and Vehicle Vibration Evaluator (VVE) - that are based on the system requirements of maglev and historical experience from operation and maintenance. With the help of these new technologies and equipment, maglev guideways will become safer and more comfortable in the future.

Guideway inspection is of great significance to the operation safety and riding quality of a commercial high-speed maglev transportation system. When analyzing guideway inspection data, it is important to obtain the location information for each piece of raw data and convert it from the time domain to the spatial domain for the analysis afterward. Previous studies have used the method of adding additional hardware such as GPS (global positioning system) receivers, LRF (location reference flag) readers, or onboard CAN (controller area network) bus adaptors to obtain location information. This paper presents a novel method for indirectly obtaining the location information via the use of data from the levitation and guidance control sensors perpendicular to the longitudinal direction to extract the characteristic information from the track. The method can be used for a long stator linear motor-driven maglev system and similar contactless rail transit systems. The results showed that the method could accurately identify the required location information in each stator tooth during the entire operation simultaneously with the operating information such as train velocity, direction, and track ID, without additional hardware installation and vehicle network connection. Thus, it could improve the pertinence of the results of guideway inspection equipment, and at the same time, facilitate the miniaturization and independence of guideway inspection equipment.

With the rapid development of rail transit, dynamic detection technology of alignment survey is playing a more and more important role. It is not an exception to Shanghai Maglev line (SHA). For SHA, long-wave deviation is the main result measured obtained from dynamic detection equipment. In recent years, long-wave deviation result has been applied not only for formulating an alignment maintenance scheme but also for analyzing alignment improvement degree. Because application of alignment dynamic detection method is new to SHA, it is necessary to research the evaluation method of alignment maintenance effect. Research on effect evaluation method such as influence area around the adjusted pier, change ratio of long-wave deviation value before-and-after alignment maintenance, readjustment scheme of alignment maintenance has been made. According to the engineering practice of SHA in 2015 and 2016, it is proved that the three kind methods are feasible.