• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.52-59
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• 1997

An experimental study is presented for the characteristics of the high temperature superconductor as an application of the repulsive type magnetic bearing. A ring shaped YBCO type superconductor and Neodium permanent magnets are employed for the experiment. For the case of field cooling, superconductor shows strong repulsive force, which is due to the Meissner effect, as the gap between the superconductor and the magnet gets closer. The repulsive force variation with respect to the gap change shows hysterisis characteristics. The area of the loop of the hysterisis curve represents the dissipation of energy, which reveals that the magnetic bearing with superconductor has large damping. The effect of the initial gap and the magnetic flux density on the repulsive force is analyzed experimentally and the static stiffness variation is calculated from the measured repulsive force variation. The relative sliding velocity between the superconductor and the magnet has little effect on the repulsive force which is quite different from the usual sliding element bearing. As the initial gap for the field cooling becomes larger, the maximum repulsive force at the minimum gap increases and approaches to the value for the case of zero field cooling.