Nonlinear vibration of a coupled high-Tc superconducting levitation system

High-T-c superconducting levitation can be applied to electro-mechanical systems, such as flywheel energy storage and linear-drive transportation. Such a system can be modeled as a magnetically coupled system of many permanent magnets and high-T-c superconducting bulks. It is a multi-degree-of-freedom dynamical system coupled by nonlinear interaction between levitated magnets and superconducting bulks. This nonlinearly coupled system, with small damping due to no contact support, can easily show complicated phenomena of nonlinear dynamics. In mechanical design, it is important to evaluate this nonlinear dynamics, though it has not been well studied so far. This research deals with forced vibration of a coupled superconducting levitation system. As a simple modeling of a coupled system, a permanent magnet levitated above a superconducting bulk is placed between two fixed permanent magnets without contact. Frequency response of the levitated magnet under excitation of one of the fixed magnets was examined theoretically. The results show typical nonlinear vibration, such as jump, hysteresis, and parametric resonance, which were confirmed in our numerical analyses and experiments. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.