Comprehensive comparison of the levitation performance of bulk YBaCuO arrays above two different types of magnetic guideways

• The effect of PMG configurations to levitation performances is investigated.
• Bigger force and greater force decay are obtained on Halbach-type PMG.
• Halbach-type PMG is not sensitive to the levitation force in various bulk arrays.
• Practical issues including costs and assembly of PMGs are considered.

The permanent magnet guideway (PMG) is an important part of high temperature superconducting (HTS) maglev systems. So far, two types of PMG, the normal PMG and Halbach-type PMG, are widely applied in present maglev transportation systems. In this paper, the levitation performance of high temperature superconductor bulks above the two PMGs was synthetically compared. Both static levitation performance and dynamic response characteristics were investigated. Benefiting from the reasonable magnetic field distribution, the Halbach-type PMG is able to gain larger levitation force, greater levitation force decay during the same relaxation time, bigger resonance frequency and dynamic stiffness for the bulk superconductor levitation unit compared with the normal PMG. Another finding is that the Halbach-type PMG is not sensitive to the levitation performance of the bulk levitation unit with different arrays. These results are helpful for the practical application of HTS maglev systems.