On dairy farms with more than 1200 cows, Carousel-type milking systems with 40 to 90 milking stations have become the most widespread. The large dimensions of the system itself and the high mechanical load on the platform lead to accelerated wear of the wheel-driven components (rail-wheel). Therefore, developing a levitating milking platform based on permanent magnets has significant practical importance. This study aimed to determine the parameters of the magnetic field generated by permanent magnets using simulation modeling in Ansys Maxwell. We considered three variants of magnetic assemblies: assemblies with rectangular and cylindrical permanent magnets, as well as cubic magnets arranged in Halbach arrays. We evaluated the overall distribution of the magnetic field in the air gap and beyond, determined the force characteristics of the magnetic field responsible for the levitation effect, and calculated the number of magnetic assemblies per milking station based on visualized results from SD modeling of the levitating magnetic field between movable and stationary magnetic assemblies in the form of magnetic induction lines. The average magnetic induction in the working gap reached 0.306 T for rectangular magnets (100 × 100 × 30 mm), 0.233 T for cylindrical magnets (100 × 30 mm), and 0.539 T for a double symmetrical Halbach assembly (5 × 5) of five cubic magnets (25 × 25 × 25 mm). The specific repulsive forces per kilogram of elementary magnetic assemblies were 84 N/kg for rectangular magnets, 48.7 N/kg for cylindrical magnets, and 314.3 N/kg for the Halbach assembly. When designing a levitating milking platform, using Halbach assemblies is preferable.
Lobachevsky et al. (Sun,) studied this question.