Modal Decoupling Control for Active Magnetic Bearing High-Speed Flywheel Rotor System with Strong Gyroscopic Effect

In high-speed flywheel energy storage system, the high ratio of the polar to transverse mass moments of inertia of the flywheel rotor and the high operating speed have a great effect on the stability of the flywheel rotor system, traditional decentralized controllers, such as PID, are very difficult to deal with such rotor instability due to significant gyroscopic effect. In order to realize effectively the stability of active magnetic bearings(AMBs) supporting flywheel rotor system with strong gyroscopic effect at high rotating speeds, a new method called modal decoupling control is proposed in this paper based on mathematic model of the AMBs high-speed rigid flywheel rotor system. The principle of the modal decoupling control is introduced, and its ability and effectiveness to control the dynamic characteristics of the AMBs high-speed rigid flywheel rotor system are numerically analyzed and compared with the traditional PID controller. It is shown that the modal decoupling control proposed can separately regulate each mode’ stiffness and damping through decoupling between the conical and the parallel modes, and obviously improve the dynamic behaviors and be capacity of stabilizing the AMBs high-speed rigid flywheel rotor system with strong gyroscopic effect in the high rotating speed region.