A self-sensing homopolar magnetic bearing: analysis and experimental results

One of the chief obstacles to constructing a reliable, low-cost, practical magnetic bearing is designing a suitable position sensor. A homopolar magnetic bearing that uses the same coils to stabilize the rotor and sense its position is introduced. A prototype bearing has been built and successfully used to stabilize a rotor. The electromagnetic analysis of the self-sensing function, the implementation of the prototype design, and experimental results verifying the theoretical analysis of the self-sensing scheme are presented in this paper.