Characteristics of high-stiffness superconducting bearing

Magnetic bearings using a high-Tc superconductor have been studied. Generally the bearing makes use of the pinning effects to get the levitation force. The stiffness of the bearing, however, is extremely low as compared with industrial-scale conventional one. To improve the bearing stiffness we propose a disc-type repulsive superconducting thrust bearing with a slit for the restraint of the flux. Both theoretical and experimental evaluation on the load performance was carried out, and it is clarified that the proposed superconducting bearing has higher stiffness