Towards Practical Applications of Self-Sensing Magnetic Bearings

The self-sensing bearing, i.e. an AMB using no specific sensing hardware at the rotor, has been developed based on controllability and observability of the AMB with voltage-input and currentoutput. It has the potential of widespread industrial application due to its unique advantages. In this paper control techniques for the self-sensing magnetic bearing are investigated as a further step towards practical applications. We shall show how sinusoidal disturbances can be effectively compensated for this new bearing type. This means that unbalance compensation is realizable for self-sensing bearing systems. Experimental results have been obtained with a realistic rotor system using a floating point signal processor with high level programming and monitoring capabilities.