Homopolar Bearingless Slice Motor with Flux-biasing Halbach Arrays

We present a new configuration of bearingless slice motor that levitates and rotates a ring-shaped solid steel reluctance rotor. The rotor is 50 mm in diameter and has salient features on the outer surface. Symmetric sets of Halbach magnet arrays, mounted on the tips of stator teeth, establish a homopolar bias flux around the rotor. The bias flux passively stabilizes the rotor in the out-of-plane tilts and axial translation, whereas the rotor's radial translations are actively stabilized by feedback control. The rotor saliencies spatially modulate the air-gap bias flux such that the resulting torque-current relationship is similar to that of permanent-magnet synchronous machines. We have designed, built, and tested a prototype bearingless motor and control system. The prototype system achieves a torque constant of 14.9mNm/A, maximum speed of 5500 rpm, and suspension bandwidth of 84 Hz with a phase margin of 11.3 deg. The rated torque and speed are 26.8 mNm and 3486 rpm, and the axial and tilting passive stiffnesses are 15.3 N/mm and 34.4 mNm/deg.