Recent Activities in European AMB Research

This presentation will give an overview of current activities of research institutes as well as industrial actors in the magnetic bearing field. The technical domains covered will be on various active magnetic bearing projects, on passive magnetic bearings and also on superconducting rotor bearings These various types of AMB will be placed in the context of a basic classification of magnetic levitation principles. Finally some activities on diamagnetic levitation will be included as well. European research on rotor bearings is mainly being done in France, Germany, Italy and Switzerland, examples from all of these will be presented. The application fields cover various industrial activities, biomedical devices, energy and micromanipulation.