Automated Assistance for Designing Active Magnetic Bearings

Stennis Space Center, Mississippi

MagBear12 is a computer code (see figure) that assists in the design of radial, heteropolar active magnetic bearings (AMBs). MagBear12 was developed to help in designing the system described in "Advanced Active-Magnetic-Bearing Thrust-Measurement System" (SSC- 00177-1), which appears in NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 32, No. 9 (September 2008), p. 61. (See the Mechanics/Machinery section in the accompanying issue of NASA Tech Briefs). Beyond this initial application, MagBear12 is expected to be useful for designing AMBs for a variety of rotating machinery. This program incorporates design rules and governing equations that are also implemented in other, proprietary design software used by AMB manufacturers. In addition, this program incorporates an advanced unpublished fringing-magnetic- field model that increases accuracy beyond that offered by the other AMB-design software.

MagBear12 accepts input from the user in the form of parameters that specify the envelope, performance, and acceptable ranges of geometric features other than the envelope. The program then calculates optimized designs within those ranges. A series of designs are presented to the designer for review. The designer can accept one of the designs or can modify the input parameters to refine the designs. The program can also be used to analyze pre-existing AMB designs.

This work was done by Joseph Imlach of Innovative Concepts In Engineering LLC for Stennis Space Center.

Inquiries concerning rights for the commercial use of this invention should be addressed to: