Halbach structures for permanent magnets bearings

Abstract

This paper is the third part of a series dealing with permanent magnet passive magnetic bearings. It presents analytical expressions of the axial force and stiffness in radial passive magnetic bearings made of ring permanent magnets with perpendicular polarizations: the inner ring polarization is perpendicular to the outer ring one. The main goal of this paper is to present a simple analytical model which can be easily implemented in Matlab or Mathematica so as to carry out parametric studies. This paper first compares the axial force and stiffness in bearings with axial, radial and perpendicular polarizations. Then, bearings made of stacked ring magnets with alternate polarizations are studied for the three kinds of polarizations, axial, radial and perpendicular. The latter correspond to Halbach structures. These calculations are useful for identifying the structures required for having great axial forces and the ones allowing to get great axial stiffnesses.