Rotor's Suspension for Vernier-gimballing magnetically suspended flywheel with conical magnetic bearing.

A novel Vernier-gimballing magnetically suspended flywheel with conical magnetic bearing (conical MB) can generate great gyroscopic moment by tilting the high-speed rotor. To output the gyroscopic moment, the high-speed rotor must be suspended stably and can be tilted. But when the rotor tilts, the gap between the stator and rotor of conical MB changes nonlinearly, what will cause the magnetic force and current stiffness of this conical MB to be serious nonlinear. To solve these problems, one kind of adaptive controller based on Lyapunov stability theory is designed by regarding the current stiffness of this conical MB as uncertain parameter. The validity of this adaptive control method is verified on a Vernier-gimballing MSFW with 68 Nms angular momentum and 1.7° maximum tilting angle. All experimental results indicated that this adaptive control has better performances on controlling rotor's stable suspension than existing PID control when the rotor translates or tilts.