• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2009.10a
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• pp.137-138
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• 2009

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.40-46
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• 2009

Toroidally-wound brushless direct-current (BLOC) machines are compact, highly efficient, and can work across a large magnetic gap. For these reasons, they have been used in pumps, flywheel energy storage systems and left ventricular assist devices among others. The common feature of these systems is a spinning rotor supported by a set of (either mechanical or magnetic) bearings. From the view point of dynamics, it is desirable to increase the first critical speed of the rotor so that it can run at a higher operating speed. The first critical speed of the rotor is determined by the radial stiffnesses of the bearings and the rotor mass. The motor also affects the first critical speed if the rotor is displaced from the rotating center. In this paper, we analytically derive the flux density distribution in a toroidally-wound BLOC machine and also derive the negative stiffness of the motor, based on the assumption that the rotor displacement perturbs the flux density distribution linearly. The estimated negative stiffness is validated by finite element analyses.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.547-548
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• 2008

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.37 no.7
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• pp.899-903
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• 2013

A self-bearing is an electric machine that achieves both rotational actuation and magnetic levitation using a single magnetic structure. To be able to stably levitate the rotor in a self-bearing, one needs to have an inverse of the force-current model. However, the force-current model in a self-bearing motor is typically not square. Furthermore, the elements of the matrix vary with respect to the rotational angle, resulting in singularities of the pseudo-inverse at various angles. In this paper, we propose a new force-current model that eliminates the singularities by adding a constraint in coil currents. This constraint eliminates the flux density in the stator core so that the saturation problem in the previous study is avoided. By implementing this force-current model, we are able to implement a levitation controller for a toroidally-wound self-bearing BLDC motor. The model inversion and levitation are validated experimentally.