Influence of the critical current on the levitation force of stacks of coated conductor superconducting tapes.

The majority of superconducting levitation systems are based on bulk superconductors. However, recently, stacks of coated conductor superconducting tapes (CC-tapes) have shown a proven potential to act as an alternative to superconducting bulks as components of a magnetic levitation system. This work primarily focuses on the influence of the critical current density on the levitation force of stacks of CC-tapes. The levitation force was measured for stacks of tapes made by different manufacturers, with different values of the critical current and substrate thickness. In our experiment, we used superconducting tapes manufactured by SuperOx, Theva and Sunam. The tapes were cut into 12 mm square pieces. The number of layers in the stack ranged from 10 to 100. Levitation forces were studied for all types of tapes and for various numbers of layers in the stack. As expected, it was found that a higher critical current corresponds to a higher levitation force. The levitation force of the stacks assembled from tapes with a higher critical current tends to saturate for lower numbers of elements in the stack. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]