Active Control of Magnetically Levitated Bearings

This report summarizes experimental and test results from a two year LDRD project entitled Real Time Error Correction Using Electromagnetic Bearing Spindles. This project was designed to explore various control schemes for levitating magnetic bearings with the goal of obtaining high precision location of the spindle and exceptionally high rotational speeds. As part of this work, several adaptive control schemes were devised, analyzed, and implemented on an experimental magnetic bearing system. Measured results, which indicated precision positional control of the spindle was possible, agreed reasonably well with simulations. Testing also indicated that the magnetic bearing systems were capable of very high rotational speeds but were still not immune to traditional structural dynamic limitations caused by spindle flexibility effects.