Monitoring of Active Magnetic Bearings

Two simple but efficient methods for integrity monitoring of position transducers within an active magnetic bearing are presented. Position transducers may be considered as a critical component in a control loop of the active magnetic bearing. Continuous monitoring of their integrity during operation may hence increase reliability and robustness of the active magnetic bearing and may improve quality and safety of a related industrial application. The proposed methods rely on a cross validation of sensorial information between different control axes of the active magnetic bearing and may be implemented entirely in software without additional hardware.