Design and development of a permanent magnet torquer for a gyroscope

In this paper, the computer aided design and development of an efficient PM torquer used in a Gyroscope is presented. The initial design using the conventional method has been analyzed and tuned using the 2-D and 3-D finite element (FE) models of the torquer. The radial magnet configuration, with two working airgaps and also with PM rings on both sides of the airgap, is found to be the optimum, owing to maximum coil utilization, increased flux density, minimum leakage flux and low coil-inductance. Samarium cobalt is used as the PM material as it makes the torquer very compact even with larger airgaps. Test results of the developed PM torquer having a scale-factor of 173.3/spl deg//hour/mA, match fairly with the computed values.