Reliable High-Speed Digital Control for Magnetic Bearings

Many magnetic bearing applications demand significant processing power, while others require higher reliability than that provided by a single processor system. A digital controller has been developed which strives to meet both of these needs in one powerful, flexible platform. This controller employs four processing modules based on the Texas Instruments TMS320C40 digital signal processor to provide hardware redundancy for fault-tolerance or for multiprocessing. A real-time, multitasking operating system has been designed to support all of these features, while aiding the application designer's implementation of complex control algorithms.