Magnetic Suspension using High Tc Superconductors and Soft Magnetic Materials and Its Application to a Contact-free Linear Guide

It is found that for small gap lengths, the force-gap characteristic between a superconductor with pinned flux and a soft magnetic material with diameters much smaller than that of the pinned area, is similar to that of a superconductor and a permanent magnet. It is considered that some of the pinned flux is subject to a "gathering effect)) in the ferromagnetic material. In this paper, a brief review of the "gathering effect" is described. It is followed by an experiment demonstrating a contact-less levitation of carbon steel bulk and two type of non-contact linear guide.