For the development of electric propulsion aircrafts with light weight, low emission and high efficiency, MW-class fully superconducting synchronous machines operating at liquid nitrogen temperature were conceptually designed with REBa ₂ Cu ₃ O _{7- δ} (REBCO) superconducting tapes in our previous studies. To verify the actualization of the structure and cooling method, a 1 kW-class prototype fully superconducting synchronous motor was designed and constructed in this study. The fixed armature was cooled with subcooled liquid nitrogen at 65 K. The rotor was cooled with helium gas. The pole number was two for the future high speed operation. The applicability of the complicated casing structure with three chambers into fully superconducting motor was also investigated from the viewpoint of thermal insulation. The operations as a motor up to 500 rpm and a generator demonstrated that the designed structure and cooling method were reasonable and effective for cooling the fixed armature and rotating field windings.

Future aircraft are expected to have low noise pollu-tion, low emission, and low fuel consumption. A fully turbo-electric propulsion system was proposed by NASA with these aims. The advantages of fully superconducting rotating machines are their weight and efficiency, owing to a high current density resulting in no iron core and no joule heat. In this study, 10 MW fully super-conducting generators with REBa2Cu3Oy (RE: Rare Earth, Y, Gd, Eu, and others, REBCO) superconducting tapes were studied in re-lation to their output power density and efficiency. The target out-put power density is over 20 kW/kg. Fully superconducting genera-tors of 10 MW were designed, then a numerical simulation of the rated operation was conducted. The AC loss of the superconduct-ing windings, iron loss of the yoke, total efficiency, dry weight, and output power density were evaluated, and their dependence on the operating temperature and the synchronous rotating speed were investigated. Here laser-scribing of the wires into a multifilamen-tary structure and transposed parallel conductors were introduced for AC loss reduction and current capacity enhancement. Conse-quently, the efficiency reached 99.2% in the case where the REB-CO superconducting tapes were scribed into a 10-filament struc-ture. The best model achieved a power density of 26.7 kW/kg. The iron yoke accounts for approximately half the total weight of all the models. The result suggests that the development of superconduct-ing shields brings significant improvement to the output power density.

With air traffic predicted to increase in the future, $\text{CO}_2$ emission must be decreased to prevent global warming. Our research group previously proposed electric propulsion systems based on superconducting technology, which is promising for reducing emissions. In this study, propulsive 2 MW fully superconducting motors were conceptually designed. At operating temperatures of 20 and 64 K, we observed the influence of the superconducting magnetic shield on the electromagnetic properties, especially the output power density, AC loss, and efficiency. The superconducting magnetic shield can reduce leakage magnetic field to the outside of the motor by inducing a current, and the shield is reproduced with a conductor of extremely high conductivity for simplicity in electromagnetic analysis. As a result, at an operating temperature of 20 K, the superconducting motors with the superconducting magnetic shields showed a high power density greater than 40 kW/kg and high efficiency of 99.7%. Even at an operating temperature of 64 K, the motors with the superconducting shield showed a power density and efficiency of 20 kW/kg and 99.4%, respectively.

We developed a highly sensitive AC/DC magnetometer using a high-temperature superconductor superconducting quantum interference device for the evaluation of magnetic nanoparticles in solutions. Using the developed system, we investigated the distribution of magnetic moments of iron oxide multi-core particles of 100 nm at various iron concentrations that are lower than 96 μg/ml by analyzing the measured magnetization curves. Singular value decomposition and non-regularized non-negative least-squares methods were used during the reconstruction of the distribution. Similar distributions were obtained for all concentrations, and the iron concentration could be determined from the measured magnetization curves. The measured harmonics upon the excitation of AC and DC magnetic fields curves agreed well with the harmonics simulated based on the reconstructed magnetization curves, implying that the magnetization curves of magnetic nanoparticles were successfully obtained as we will show in the article. We compared the magnetization curves between multi-core particles of 100 nm and 130 nm, composed of 12-nm iron oxide nanoparticles. A distinctive magnetic property between the 100 nm and 130 nm particles in low-concentration solutions was successfully characterized. The distribution characteristic of magnetic moments suggests that the net magnetic moment in a multi-core particle is affected by the size of the magnetic cores and their degree of aggregation. Exploration of magnetic properties with high sensitivity can be expected using the developed system.

Defect detection on the backside of thick steel plates is essential for the safety maintenance of most infrastructures in which they are used. Eddy-current testing (ECT) is a promising method to detect the defects in a steel plate, and inspections at low frequencies are necessary to suppress the skin effect. However, if the frequency is reduced further, the signal from the detection coil also becomes smaller. Therefore, we assessed the optimal frequency for the detection of slit defects on the backside of a 10 mm thick steel plate based on experiments and electromagnetic simulations using the finite-element method. The results suggest that the optimal frequency to detect the defects is approximately 8-10 Hz when the height of the slit exceeds 6 mm. Similarly, in the simulation, the signal was maximized when the frequency was 8-10 Hz, which validates the experimental results. Furthermore, we propose a method to emphasize the deeper defects using multi-frequency data as a fundamental study. The results show that the backside defects are depicted more clearly.

The evaluation of opposite-side defects in thick ferromagnetic objects (for example, steel plates) is essential for safety maintenance. Eddy-current testing (ECT) can detect defects in metallic specimens; however, owing to the skin effect, its use is limited to the evaluation of surface or subsurface defects. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a non-contacting inspection system that consists of two excitation coils and a detection coil to detect slit defects on the backside of a steel plate using low-frequency ECT (LF-ECT). Using the proposed system, we examine whether LF-ECT mainly detects the leakage or the flux induced by the eddy current, and also examine which direction of the excitation currents in the two excitation coils is suitable for detecting slit defects. The results suggest that the method to drive the current in the same direction and to detect the imaginary part of the magnetic flux density, which corresponds to the flux induced by the eddy current, is suitable for detecting slit defects. Subsequently, we examine the detection limit of the height of the slit defect when the thickness of the steel plate is 10 mm and the width and length of the slit defect are constant, at 50 and 1 mm, respectively. The results demonstrate that the slit defect can be detected by using the proposed system when the height is greater than or equal to 4 mm. Therefore, the proposed system is a promising tool to detect critical defects on the backside of steel plates.