Modeling of Hybrid Permanent Magnetic-Gas Bearings

Modern turbomachinery applications require nowadays ever-growing rotational speeds and high degree of reliability. It then becomes natural to focus the attention of the research to contact-free bearings elements. The present alternatives focus on gas lubricated journal bearings or magnetic bearings. In the present paper both the technologies are combined with the aim of developing a new kind of hybrid permanent magnetic - gas bearing. This new kind of machine is intended to exploit the benefits of the two technologies while minimizing their drawbacks. The poor start-up and low speed operation performance of the gas bearing is balanced by the properties of the passive magnetic one. At high speeds the dynamic characteristics of the gas bearing are improved by offsetting the stator ring of the permanent magnetic bearing. Furthermore this design shows a kind of redundancy, which offers soft failure properties. In the present paper, a detailed mathematical modeling of the gas bearing based on the compressible form of the Reynolds equation is presented. Perturbation theory is applied in order to identify the dynamic characteristic of the bearing. Due to the simple design of the magnetic bearings elements - being concentric rings with radial magnetic orientation - analytical expressions for the calculation of the magnetic flux density and forces are employed, opposed to the main literature trend where finite element software is utilized at least for the calculation of the B-field. Numerical analysis shows how the rotor equilibrium position can be made independent on the rotational speed and applied load; it becomes function of the passive magnetic bearing offset. By adjusting the offset it is possible to significantly influence the dynamic coefficients of the hybrid bearing.