Identification of dynamic stiffness and damping in active magnetic bearings using transfer functions of electrical control system

The dynamic rotor behavior is significantly affected by the stiffness and damping characteristics of the bearings. Therefore, it is important to identify these bearing parameters. For active magnetic bearings (AMBs), these bearing parameters not only could be identified from rotor dynamic response, but also from electrical control system transfer function. Some identification works from rotor dynamic response have been reported, but identification from electrical control system transfer function is relatively few. In this paper, we deduced the equivalent stiffness and damping expressions with electrical control system transfer function for rotor AMBs and identified these values from electrical control system model. To evaluate the identified results, previous reported results from rotor dynamic response is employed for comparison. We found that for the stiffness, a complete and precise electrical control model will obtain relatively consistent values; however, for the damping, the accurate electrical control model is still not enough and the eddy current loss should be included.