Safety and reliability aspects

Abstract

The application of active magnetic bearings for rotating machinery has become state of the art and ranges from research prototypes to industrial applications, from small turbo-molecular pumps to powerful pipeline compressors in the megawatt range. Users are aware that, beyond function, the safety and reliability of this equipment is critical to its continued commercial development. Safety is more than a mere technical issue. It contains a strong component of psychological interpretation, and societal demands for safety in machinery are ever increasing. Reliability, on the other side, has a definitely technical touch, and it appears to be more amenable to engineering calculations and to economic considerations. Mathematical tools for assessing reliability of classical technical systems, and performance numbers for comparing them, such as mean time between failures, are readily available. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.