Linear and Nonlinear Control of a Three Pole Combined Active Magnetic Bearing - a Comparison

This paper analyses a linear and a nonlinear control strategy for a 5-axis magnetic suspension system built with two three pole combined bearings. In these soft magnetic composites (SMC) are used as iron core material to carry the required threedimensional flux distribution. While the linear approach is designed around the CLARKE-Transformation to stabilize the bearing, the nonlinear one is based on feedback linearization to achieve a stable system even in the case of minimal bias flux. The paper outlines the control strategies and the controller design. Both schemes are compared regarding tracking behavior, decoupling performance and stability margin based on experimental results in the time and frequency domain.