Homopolar Hyteresis Bearingless Motors

We present a new concept of bearingless slice motors that levitates and rotates a ring-shaped rotor made of a semi-hard magnetic material such as D2 steel. The rotor is biased with a homopolar permanent-magnetic flux, on which 2-pole flux can be superimposed to generate suspension forces. The torque is generated by a hysteretic coupling between the rotor and a rotating 6-pole stator field. We discuss the design of the prototype system and its performance estimates from FEA simulations.