A sophisticated concept for supreme AMB reliability

Abstract

Active magnetic bearings (AMBs) offer a couple of advantages compared to conventional bearings such as contact-free suspension without wear and the variation of suspension parameters such as stiffness and damping during operation. A lower reliability caused by a number of fairly complex sub-assemblies (controller, sensors, amplifiers, magnetic actuator, etc.), however, is one major reason that AMB-technology is not sufficiently accepted so far in many practical industrial applications. While many concepts for increasing the reliability of AMBs have been presented in literature so far, all of them show some weak points, which to some extent even reduce the overall reliability.

Within this paper a new concept for AMBs reliability is presented, which offers supreme reliability of the whole AMB-system, not only an improvement within single areas. Thus, supreme reliability shall be guaranteed over the whole operating time and the bearing capacity shall be maintained even in case of a defect within any sub-assembly.