Modeling and analysis of a novel conical magnetic bearing for vernier-gimballing magnetically suspended flywheel

Abstract

The vernier-gimballing magnetically suspended flywheel can generate control moment in radial directions by tilting the spinning rotor to rotate around the radial axes. In order to reduce the extra tilting torque caused by the uniform distribution of flux density and the magnetic coupling among different channels, a novel 3 degrees of freedom conical permanent-magnet-biased magnetic bearing is proposed in the paper. The axial and radial stators are both designed with the normal directions of the midst faces directing to the centroid of the rotor, so as to decrease the extra torque by shortening the length of torque arm. A novel structure of radial X and Y stator poles separated by nonmagnetic material is proposed, and the upper and lower conical stators are designed to be mirror structures with each other, so that the magnetic coupling can be reduced. The mathematical model of the proposed permanent-magnet-biased magnetic bearing is constructed by methods of equivalent magnetic circuit and finite element. Calculations and simulations are carried out on the suspension force, extra tilting torque, and force coupling. The results show that with the conical structure, the extra tilting torque can be decreased from 10.83 Nm to 0.11 Nm when the rotor tilts around X axis for 1°. The magnetic forces among X, Y, and Z directions are almost decoupled even when the rotor shifts in some direction. All the results prove that the novel permanent-magnet-biased magnetic bearing is suitable for application in vernier-gimballing magnetically suspended flywheel.