Abstract: Magnetic stiffness is one of the important stability parameters of high temperature superconducting levitation systems. Till to now, great efforts have been made to understand levitation properties including flux penetration, magnetization curves, levitation force, ac susceptibilities, etc. In this paper we present a quadratic approximation method for the limit of magnetic stiffness in a high temperature superconducting levitation system based on Kim’s critical state model and Ampère law. The system is composed with a cylindrical permanent magnet (PM) and a coaxial high temperature superconductor (HTS). It is found that the limit of magnetic stiffness depends upon both the penetration history of shielding currents distribution in HTS and applied magnetic field gradients. Furthermore, the influence of the physical parameters, such as critical current density in HTS and applied magnetic field, on the limits of magnetic stiffness is investigated in detail. The obtained results display that magnetic stiffness decreases with the increasing of critical current density, since shielding currents have not penetrated into the large portion of the HTS. With the increase of applied magnetic field, the magnetic stiffness obtain a larger magnification factor. It is related to the increase of the shielding current penetration volume and the internal magnetic field in HTS.
Keywords: Influence, physical parameters, the limit of magnetic stiffness
