Levitation force analysis of ring and disk shaped permanent magnet-high temperature superconductor

In superconducting magnetic levitation systems, interaction models between a high temperature superconductor and a permanent magnet are useful to analyze the dynamics of the levitated system. In this study, stiffness equations of a superconducting levitation system using a disk and a ring permanent are obtained using frozen image concept. The variation of the stiffness has been analyzed for vertical movements of the PMs. For engineering applications, accuracy of such models should be tested experimentally. An experimental PM-HTS setup has been built to verify the obtained models for different cooling height conditions. Levitation forces computed using the frozen image approach for the disk and ring PMs are converged to the experimental results when the cooling heights are smaller values.