Control of Magnetically Levitated Rotors with Defective Bearings or Sensors

Abstract:
Many proposed control methods have in common that all sensors or actuators are assumed to be working, or that the degrees of freedom of the rigid body can directly be calculated from the sensor values. In contrast to these control structures, in this article the question should be answered, if it is possible to stabilize an active magnetic bearing (AMB) system in the case of actuator or sensor faults, without the need of redundant sensors, actuators or coils. Thus, the observability and reachability of AMB systems were analyzed. Based on the results of these analyses controllers were developed using the μ-synthesis method. Finally, the proposed controllers are experimentally validated on a 5 degree of freedom (DOF) AMB system.