Experimental Investigations of Minimum Power Consumption Optimal Control for Variable Speed AMB Rotor

The purpose of this paper is to present a method for development of the optimal speed-dependent control matrix for a rotor supported on active magnetic bearings (AMBs) with the provision of minimum control power consumption over the operating speed range. The speed dependency of the optimal control matrix is the result of the dynamics of rotating machines. Most of published works on optimal control use a stationary optimal control matrix derived for the non-rotating system and thus neglecting the effect of gyroscopic phenomena. This paper employs the minimum energy consumption condition to derive the speed varying optimal control for rotating AMB rotor system. In the presented approach the control matrix is characterized by a second order polynomial matrix with the angular speed as a variable. This leads to a more compact and lower computational burden for controller implementation. Calculations are performed for a 4-axis AMB rotor test rig. Testing with rotor speed ramps is performed and experimental values for power consumption are presented. These results are compared to results with speed invariant optimal control and PID control.