Stiffness Analysis of Vertical-Axis Wind Turbines Rotors Using Permanent Magnet Attractive Type Passive Magnetic Bearings

In the previous work, the authors have proposed a design of a magnetic levitated vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) for power generation purposes by using two permanent magnets attractive type passive magnetic bearings where the rotor was actively controlled in one degree of freedom (DOF) in the axial direction. The proposed model is simpler than the other VAWT designs and has low cost; however, the radial stiffness is not high enough to rotate the rotor at high speeds. Therefore, this paper discusses the stiffness analysis of different rotor shapes which can be used in VAWT by three-dimensional (3-D) magnetic-field analysis. The simulation results will be compared with the experimental results to evaluate which rotor shape is suitable for stable levitation and rotation at the different wind speeds.