Evaluation of superconductor assisted machining (SUAM) with superconducting coated conductors using the finite element method

In the present study, we numerically calculated the magnetic levitation force for superconductor assisted machining (SUAM) using the finite element method. Although we usually use bulk superconductors for magnetic levitation in SUAM, we herein considered magnetic levitation using superconductor-coated conductors. We were able to explain the experimental results on the forces of the coated conductors as well as bulk theoretically. For both bulk and coated conductor, the repulsive force was found to increase as the distance from the permanent magnet became shorter. For the coated materials, both the repulsive and attractive forces were lower than in the case of bulk superconductors. This is because the volume of superconducting material was smaller than in the case of bulk superconductors, since the overall size of both materials was the same. However, we believe that greater forces can be obtained by increasing the number of coated conductors.