Theoretical Analysis and Comparative Study of Contact Permanent Magnet Locking Mechanisms Used in Aerospace

In aerospace instruments, many moving units need to be locked by an auxiliary mechanism separately under non-working state, in order to avoid the interaction to other equipment. The contactless locking mechanism has low energy density, small locking force and poor anti-interference ability. In this paper, a contact permanent magnet locking mechanism is proposed, and two kinds of magnetic circuit design schemes, radial and axial, are compared and analyzed. The main performance parameters of the two schemes are quantitatively studied by three-dimensional FEM method, the relations between the locking force, locking angle, energy density and structural parameters are determined, which indicate that the axial structure is better. The theoretical results are finally verified by experimental results on a prototype, which proved that the design is reasonable in practical engineering.