Numerical analysis of a superconducting bearing

High-Tc superconducting bearings are expected as a key technology for flywh eel energy storage systems (FWES). However, low bearing stiffness behavior becomes serious obstacles to realize FWES. We have so far suggested various kinds of bearing construction to improve the bearing stiffness, but the va rious improvements of superconducting bearings bring complicated magnetic c ircuit structure, which makes the analysis of the bearings and realization difficult. For this reason, we have been constructing tbe numerical analysi s program using three-dimensional scaler potential method based on the crit ical state model to proceed the stiffness improvement study. In this paper, we show the validity of the developed program for the disc-t ype superconducting bearing, which consist of a superconductor and a perman ent magnet And this means that we can estimate the behavior of real size su perconducting bearings for FWES.