Analysis of axially magnetized permanent magnet bearing characteristics

The use of permanent magnets as bearings has gained attention of researchers nowadays. The characteristics of forces and moments have to be analysed thoroughly for the proper design of permanent magnet bearings. This paper presents a mathematical model of an axially magnetized permanent magnet bearing (ring magnets) using Coulombian model and a vector approach to estimate the force, moment and stiffness. A MATLAB code is developed for evaluating the parameters for five degrees of freedom (three translational and two rotational) of the rotor. Furthermore, it is extended to analyse stacked ring magnets with alternate axial polarizations. The proposed model is validated with the available literature. Comparison of force and stiffness results of the presented model with the results of three dimensional (3D) finite element analysis using ANSYS shows good agreement. Finally, the cross coupled stiffness values in addition to the principal stiffness values are presented for elementary structures and also for stacked structures with three ring permanent magnets.