Magnetic Bearings and Bearingless Drives

1

Introduction

Tadashi Fukao and Akira Chiba

In this chapter, an overview of bearingless drives and magnetic bearings is presented; the principle of radial force generation is discussed and a typical motor drive with magnetic bearings is introduced and compared with the bearingless drive. In addition, a definition of the bearingless motor is given and the related technologies and early developments are reviewed. Typical application structures, winding configurations, radial force and torque comparisons and applications are also included.

1.1 Magnetic bearing and motor drive

A new bearingless concept was introduced into ac drive technology in the late 1980s. Since then, the theory and background of the concept has been studied, with many test ...