• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.175-183
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• 2010

The increased demand for a higher performing magnetic suspension and balance system (MSBS) resulted in an increase in costs for the efforts necessary for achieving an improved MSBS. Therefore, MSBS performance should be predicted during the design in order to reduce risk. This paper presents the modeling and simulation of an MSBS that controls 6-degree of freedom (DOF) of an aerodynamic body within the MSBS. Permanent magnets and electromagnets were modeled as coils, and this assumption was verified by experimental results. Finally, an MSBS simulator was developed, predicting that the MSBS is able to contain the model within a bounded region as well as measure external forces acting on the body during wind tunnel tests.

• Journal of Aerospace System Engineering
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.28-35
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• 2017

Magnetic Suspension and Balance System (MSBS) demonstrates the capacity to levitate an experimental model absent any mechanical contact using magnetic forces and moments. It allows precise control of position and attitude of the model, and measures external forces and moments acting on the model. For the purpose of acquisition of reliable experimental results under stable and safe conditions, the performance and robustness of the position and attitude control system of MSBS needs to be improved. To this end, Iterative Feedback Tuning (IFT) and L1 adaptive output feedback algorithm were employed to automatically increase command following performance and to ensure robust operation of MSBS with failure of electric power supply. The applicability was validated using computational simulation.

• International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.414-424
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• 2017

This paper introduces an experimental device which can measure accurate aerodynamic forces without support interference in wide experimental region for wind tunnel test of micro aerial vehicles (MAVs). A stereo pattern recognition (SPR) method was introduced to a magnetic suspension and balance system (MSBS), which can eliminate support interference by levitating the experimental model, to establish wider experimental region; thereby MSBS-SPR integrated system was developed. The SPR method is non-contact, highly accurate three-dimensional position measurement method providing wide measurement range. To evaluate the system performance, a series of performance evaluations including SPR system measurement accuracy and 6 degrees of freedom (DOFs) position/attitude control of the MAV model were conducted. This newly developed system could control the MAV model rapidly and accurately within almost 60mm for translational DOFs and 40deg for rotational DOFs inside of $300{\times}300mm$ test section. In addition, a static wind tunnel test was conducted to verify the aerodynamic force measurement capability. It turned out that this system could accurately measure the aerodynamic forces in low Reynolds number, even for the weak forces which were hard to measure using typical balance system, without making any mechanical contact with the MAV model.