Real-Time Emulator of Magnetic Suspension System for FPGA-based Controller

This paper presents an implementation of an FPGA-based real-time emulator for mechatronic applications. Active Magnetic Bearings (AMBs) for contactless support of high-speed rotors are selected as a case study. It is shown that for a general class of state-space models with separable nonlinearities, it is possible to build an optimized hardware implementation of the plant emulator or state observer, a basic part of a state-space controller. The emulator can be used for real-time validation of the control system and its components. Firstly, the paper focuses on the implementation of the nonlinear part of the AMB actuator. Secondly, the implementation of the linearized plant dynamics of an actuator and mechanical rotor model are presented. Finally, the implementation of complex numbered state-space models, e.g. flexible rotor models, using different arithmetic units for complex numbers, is discussed.