OPTIMIZED CONFIGURATIONS OF AUTOSTABLE SUPERCONDUCTING MAGNETIC BEARINGS FOR PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

In order to establish an optimized bearing design for a flywheel for e nergy storage, we have studied model bearing configurations involving bulk YBCO pellets and double-dipole magnet configurations. We were int erested to see what is the correlation between the maximum attainable levitation force, measured for a typical bearing gap of 3 mm, and the separation between the magnetic poles. Equal polarity (north-north) an d alternate polarity (north-south) configurations were investigated. T he maximum levitation force was obtained with the alternate polarity a rrangement for a separation between the magnetic poles of 6 mm. It rep resents an increase of 19% compared to a non-optimized configuration. Our experiments demonstrate that configurations of superconducting mag netic bearings can be optimized to obtain better levitation properties .