Fault Tolerant Magnetic Bearings

1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (3) ◽  
pp. 504-508 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. H. Maslen ◽  
C. K. Sortore ◽  
G. T. Gillies ◽  
R. D. Williams ◽  
S. J. Fedigan ◽  
...  

A fault tolerant magnetic bearing system was developed and demonstrated on a large flexible-rotor test rig. The bearing system comprises a high speed, fault tolerant digital controller, three high capacity radial magnetic bearings, one thrust bearing, conventional variable reluctance position sensors, and an array of commercial switching amplifiers. Controller fault tolerance is achieved through a very high speed voting mechanism which implements triple modular redundancy with a powered spare CPU, thereby permitting failure of up to three CPU modules without system failure. Amplifier/cabling/coil fault tolerance is achieved by using a separate power amplifier for each bearing coil and permitting amplifier reconfiguration by the controller upon detection of faults. This allows hot replacement of failed amplifiers without any system degradation and without providing any excess amplifier kVA capacity over the nominal system requirement. Implemented on a large (2440 mm in length) flexible rotor, the system shows excellent rejection of faults including the failure of three CPUs as well as failure of two adjacent amplifiers (or cabling) controlling an entire stator quadrant.

2013 ◽  
Vol 2013 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enqiong Tang ◽  
Bangcheng Han

The magnetically suspended control moment gyros (MSCMGs) are complex system with multivariable, nonlinear, and strongly gyroscopic coupling. Therefore, its reliability is a key factor to determine whether it can be widely used in spacecraft. Fault-tolerant magnetic bearing systems have been proposed so that the system can operate normally in spite of some faults in the system. However, the conventional magnetic bearing and fault-tolerant control strategies are not suitable for the MSCMGs because of the moving-gimbal effects and requirement of the maximum load capacity after failure. A novel fault-tolerant magnetic bearing system which has low power loss and good robust performances to reject the moving-gimbal effects is presented in this paper. Moreover, its maximum load capacity is unchanged before and after failure. In addition, the compensation filters are designed to improve the bandwidth of the amplifiers so that the nutation stability of the high-speed rotor cannot be affected by the increasing of the coil currents. The experimental results show the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed fault-tolerant system.


2012 ◽  
Vol 252 ◽  
pp. 51-55
Author(s):  
Zhen Yu Xie ◽  
Hong Kai Zhou ◽  
Xiao Wang

The magnetic damper was introduced into the high speed rotating machinery to restrain the vibration of the rotor supported by active magnetic bearings. The experimental setup, which was made up of one rotor, two radial active magnetic bearings, one axial active magnetic bearing, one magnetic damper and control system, was built to investigate the effects of the magnetic damper locations on dynamic characteristics of the system by theoretical analysis, experimental modal analysis and actual operation of the system. The results show that the vibration of the active magnetic bearing system operating at the modal frequency can be reduced more effectively if the magnetic damper is located far from the nodes of the corresponding mode shape.


Author(s):  
Lawrence Hawkins ◽  
Zhiyang Wang ◽  
Koman Nambiar

Qualification shock testing has been completed for a new chilled water plant developed for the US Navy. The variable speed compressor at the heart of the chiller system includes a direct drive, high-speed permanent magnet (PM) motor, PM bias active magnetic bearings, and a backup bearing system. For MIL-S-901D shock certification, the chiller was mounted on a Navy floating shock platform (barge) and subjected to a standard sequence of four different shock impacts generated from high explosive charges from varying angles and standoff distances. The chiller was fully operational during three blasts and in standby mode for the fourth blast. In the standby mode, the shaft is de levitated and stationary on the backup bearings and the chiller secured. The backup bearing system of the motor absorbed the response to the shock impacts and the magnetic bearings subsequently recovered levitation as designed. The shock testing was simulated using a transient, nonlinear rotordynamic analysis including the magnetic bearing control and saturation features, backup bearings with resilient mounts and associated clearances, and structural dynamic models of the rotor and housing. Compressor/motor housing acceleration measured during the testing was used as the driving input into the simulation. Some rotor position data recorded during shock testing, the simulation approach and comparisons are reported and discussed.


Author(s):  
Zhe Sun ◽  
Jingjing Zhao ◽  
Zhengang Shi ◽  
Suyuan Yu

Magnetic bearings are widely applied in High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactor (HTGR), where the rotating machineries are running under high purely helium environment. In designing and adjusting a magnetic bearing system, the mathematical model of the rotor plays an important role. Identification is a useful method to obtain the model of a rotor. However, there are some practical difficulties of identifying a magnetic bearing-rotor system without force sensors. This paper proposes an identification method for flexible rotor suspended by magnetic bearings. In this method, two experiments under different bearing stiffness are performed, the models obtained by these two experiments are then transformed to the desired rotor model and the influence of bearing stiffness is eliminated in this transformation. The proposed method is validated on an experimental system with a five degree-of-freedom suspended flexible rotor.


Author(s):  
R. Jett Field ◽  
Christopher K. Sortore ◽  
Victor Iannello

Magnetic bearing systems for more-electric engines (MEEs) are under development for aircraft and industrial applications to improve performance and reduce maintenance requirements. Key features of the magnetic bearing system are high performance, high temperature actuators with integrated sensors; a high speed digital controller; a high reliability, fault-tolerant system architecture; modular amplifiers; active control of tip clearance; and adaptive control algorithms. Critical components of the magnetic bearing system have been demonstrated in an engine manufacturer’s rotordynamic test stand and other components are in various stages of development.


Author(s):  
Cheol Hoon Park ◽  
Jun Young Park ◽  
Eui Soo Yoon

Recently, high capacity and high efficiency turbo machines such as turbo blowers and turbo compressors have been being developed. To keep up with this trend, magnetic bearings are increasingly being applied to turbo machines instead of air foil bearings. In this study, a hybrid magnetic bearing composed of a permanent magnet and an electromagnet was applied to 300-HP (horsepower) turbo compressors with rated speeds of 50,000 rpm. The length of the shaft should be reduced as short as possible so that the compressor rotor can rotate stably while maintaining a small vibration at a rotation speed of 50,000 rpm. In this study, the additional shaft length for the axial gap sensor is eliminated by applying a new layout in which the axial gap sensor is placed on the inner surface of the thrust magnetic bearing. No-load tests and full-load tests in the manufactured turbo compressors were performed to evaluate the performance of the designed magnetic bearings. The biggest obstacle to this development is the heat problems caused by compressor impellers and high-speed motors. Thanks to the cooling system using water and air, the problem of thermal expansion of the rotor in the axial direction can be avoided. Thrust forces were estimated using the control current for thrust magnetic bearings. The experiment is also performed to evaluate the vibration of each turbo compressor and the results are presented. Based on the evaluated vibration, it has been confirmed that the hybrid magnetic bearings and the new axial gap sensor layout can support the turbo compressors stably.


Author(s):  
A. S. Lewis ◽  
A. Sinha ◽  
K. W. Wang

A sliding mode feedback algorithm is proposed to control the vibration of a flexible rotor supported by magnetic bearings. It is assumed that the number of states is greater than the number of sensors. A mathematical model of the rotor/magnetic bearing system is presented in terms of partial differential equations. These equations are then discretized into a finite number of ordinary differential equations through Galerkin’s method. The sliding mode control law is designed to be robust to rotor imbalance and transient disturbances. A boundary layer is introduced around each sliding hyperplane to eliminate the chattering phenomenon. The results from numerical simulations are presented which not only corroborate the validity of the proposed controller, but also show the effects of various control parameters as a function of the angular speed of the rotor. In addition, results are presented that indicate how the current required by the magnetic bearings is affected by control parameters and the angular speed of the rotor.


2002 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 186-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. S. Keogh ◽  
M. O. T. Cole ◽  
C. R. Burrows

A technique is introduced to achieve transient vibration attenuation in a multi-input, multi-output flexible rotor/magnetic bearing system. The strategy employs feedback control of measured harmonic components of rotor vibration. Whereas previous harmonic controllers have been based only on steady state vibration characteristics, the new controller also incorporates the transient dynamics. The controller may still be designed from measured data and is determined from target transient vibrational responses arising from step changes in particular disturbances. Account is taken of delays arising from evaluation of harmonic components. Furthermore, stability boundaries for the controller are shown to have significant tolerance to measurement error. The controller is validated experimentally in a flexible rotor/magnetic bearing system and mass loss tests are used to demonstrate rapid decrease in vibration levels with near elimination of transient overshoot.


2000 ◽  
Vol 123 (3) ◽  
pp. 464-472 ◽  
Author(s):  
Z. S. Spakovszky ◽  
J. D. Paduano ◽  
R. Larsonneur ◽  
A. Traxler ◽  
M. M. Bright

Magnetic bearings are widely used as active suspension devices in rotating machinery, mainly for active vibration control purposes. The concept of active tip-clearance control suggests a new application of magnetic bearings as servo-actuators to stabilize rotating stall in axial compressors. This paper presents a first-of-a-kind feasibility study of an active stall control experiment with a magnetic bearing servo-actuator in the NASA Glenn high-speed single-stage compressor test facility. Together with CFD and experimental data a two-dimensional, incompressible compressor stability model was used in a stochastic estimation and control analysis to determine the required magnetic bearing performance for compressor stall control. The resulting requirements introduced new challenges to the magnetic bearing actuator design. A magnetic bearing servo-actuator was designed that fulfilled the performance specifications. Control laws were then developed to stabilize the compressor shaft. In a second control loop, a constant gain controller was implemented to stabilize rotating stall. A detailed closed loop simulation at 100 percent corrected design speed resulted in a 2.3 percent reduction of stalling mass flow, which is comparable to results obtained in the same compressor by Weigl et al. (1998. ASME J. Turbomach. 120, 625–636) using unsteady air injection. The design and simulation results presented here establish the viability of magnetic bearings for stall control in aero-engine high-speed compressors. Furthermore, the paper outlines a general design procedure to develop magnetic bearing servo-actuators for high-speed turbomachinery.


2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Tangredi ◽  
Enrico Meli ◽  
Andrea Rindi ◽  
Alessandro Ridolfi ◽  
Pierluca D’Adamio ◽  
...  

Nowadays, the search for increasing performances in turbomachinery applications has led to a growing utilization of active magnetic bearings (AMBs), which can bring a series of advantages thanks to their features: AMBs allow the machine components to reach higher peripheral speeds; in fact there are no wear and lubrication problems as the contact between bearing surfaces is absent. Furthermore, AMBs characteristic parameters can be controlled via software, optimizing machine dynamics performances. However, active magnetic bearings present some peculiarities, as they have lower load capacity than the most commonly used rolling and hydrodynamic bearings, and they need an energy source; for these reasons, in case of AMBs overload or breakdown, an auxiliary bearing system is required to support the rotor during such landing events. During the turbomachine design process, it is fundamental to appropriately choose the auxiliary bearing type and characteristics, because such components have to resist to the rotor impact; so, a supporting design tool based on accurate and efficient models of auxiliary bearings is very useful for the design integration of the Active Magnetic Bearing System into the machine. This paper presents an innovative model to accurately describe the mechanical behavior of a complete rotor-dynamic system composed of a rotor equipped with two auxiliary rolling bearings. The model, developed and experimentally validated in collaboration with Baker Hughes a GE company (providing the test case and the experimental data), is able to reproduce the key physical phenomena experimentally observed; in particular, the most critical phenomenon noted during repeated experimental combined landing tests is the rotor forward whirl, which occurs in case of high friction conditions and greatly influences the whole system behavior. In order to carefully study some special phenomena like rotor coast down on landing bearings (which requires long period of time to evolve and involves many bodies and degrees of freedom) or other particular events like impacts (which occur in a short period of time), a compromise between accuracy of the results and numerical efficiency has been pursued. Some of the elements of the proposed model have been previously introduced in literature; however the present work proposes some new features of interest. For example, the lateral and the axial models have been properly coupled in order to correctly reproduce the effects observed during the experimental tests and a very important system element, the landing bearing compliant suspension, has been properly modelled to more accurately describe its elastic and damping effects on the system. Furthermore, the model is also useful to characterize the frequencies related to the rotor forward whirl motion.


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