Design, Construction and Testing of a Kinetic Energy Storage Device with High Tc Superconductive Suspensions

The paper describes a small kinetic energy storage device built to demonstrate the feasibility of a flywheel system in which the rotor is supported on a five axis passive magnetic suspension based on High-Tc superconductors (HTS). The tests aimed to measure the performances of the superconductive magnetic bearing are described together with the details of the design and the analysis and the tests on the prototype. The machine has been operated satisfactorily using a hybrid bearing layout and will be tested using a complete magnetic suspension as soon as superconductors with higher characteristics will be available.