Iron-YBCO heterostructures and their application for trapped field superconducting motor

In this work we report on the magnetic behavior of the heterostructures formed by bulk based YBCO rings and ferromagnetic yoke. The magnetization cycle has been performed by an In-Field Hall Mapping technique. A video-like recording of the magnetization process makes it possible to obtain the magnetization of selected areas. The current flowing through the superconducting rings can be deduced from the magnetic field maps. The displacement of the peak of magnetization due to the flux reversal produced by the magnetization of the yoke is also considered. These hybrid heterostructures formed by ferromagnetic and superconducting material have been applied in the construction of the rotor for a brushless AC motor. The design and construction of this machine was carried out within the framework of the TMR Network SUPERMACHINES. The rotor has been designed in a quadrupolar configuration by cutting large YBCO window frames from seeded melt-textured single domain YBCO pellets. This rotor has been coupled to a conventional stator of copper coils wound on an iron armature. The stator can be excited both in bipolar or quadrupolar mode. We report on the behaviour of the motor after a field cooling process when excited in quadrupolar mode. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.