This paper describes levitation characteristics of high speed magnetically suspended trains. In the case of magnetic repulsion type with tracked coils, transverse force caused by the displacement of transverse direction of coil center increases with increasing its displacement. On the other hand, however, lifting force decreases in proportion to that displacement.
In order to study the stability of this method, lifting and transverse forces for various current configurations are calculated by the approximation of infinitely long line current.
For the levitation with magnets placed on both sides of train as conventional wheels, it is shown that lifting and transverse forces are influenced by polarities as transverse displacement of these magnets and the null flux method proposed by Powell and Danby has a good stability against transverse displacement.