Suppression of guidance force decay of HTS bulk exposed to AC magnetic field perturbation in a maglev vehicle system

Superconducting maglev vehicle was one of the most promising applications of HTS bulks. In such a system, the HTS bulks were always exposed to AC external magnetic field, which was generated by the inhomogeneous surface magnetic field of the NdFeB guideway. In our previous work, it was observed that the guidance force of the YBCO bulk over the NdFdB guideway used in the high-temperature superconducting maglev vehicle system was decayed by the application of the AC external magnetic field. In this paper, we adopted a method to suppress the decay by altering the field–cooled height of the bulk. From the experimental results, it was found that the decay rate of the guidance force was smaller at lower field–cooled height. So we could suppress the guidance force decay of HTS bulk exposed to AC external magnetic field perturbation in the maglev vehicle system by reducing the field–cooled height of the bulk. Furthermore, all the experimental results in this paper were explained based on Bean critical-state model.