Magnetic rail construction for a low loss superconducting magnetic levitation linear guide

A pinning-type superconducting magnetic levitation linear guide which consists of bulk high-T/sub c/superconductors and a magnetic linear rail with permanent magnets and steel plates was investigated for a goods transportation system, an energy storage system, and other uses. This paper describes the loss of this linear guide and a construction of the magnetic linear rail in which no inhomogeneous magnetic field is generated in a comparatively large gap in a long distance configuration. The loss is evaluated analytically by a newly developed electromagnetic analysis program. This proposed magnetic rail construction suppresses inhomogeneous magnetic fields generated by the existence of such spaces as temperature change countermeasures. We performed analyses and experiments on this construction. Results show that calculated and measured values concur well both quantitatively and qualitatively, proving that the proposed magnetic linear rail shows magnetic field distribution that is uniform in the running direction in the required gap.