Behavior of a novel thrust magnetic bearing with a cylindrical rotor on high speed rotation

Thrust magnetic bearings, which can regulate axial displacement of a rotor shaft, have been used for high-speed rotation. However, conventional thrust magnetic bearings have many problems in manufacturing and assembling caused by a large disk rotor of itself. Therefore, we have proposed a novel structure of a thrust magnetic bearing without the large disk rotor. A cylindrical rotor, that has a small diameter as well as a simple shape, is used in the proposed thrust magnetic bearing. This paper introduces the structure and the principle of the proposed thrust magnetic bearing. In addition, it is shown with experiments on high-speed operation that the proposed thrust magnetic bearing is equipped with the sufficient performance in order to make for practical use.