Af. Storace et al., INTEGRATION OF MAGNETIC BEARINGS IN THE DESIGN OF ADVANCED GAS-TURBINE ENGINES, Journal of engineering for gas turbines and power, 117(4), 1995, pp. 655-665
Active magnetic bearings provide revolutionary advantages for gas turb
ine engine rotor support. These advantages include tremendously improv
ed vibration and stability characteristics, reduced power loss, improv
ed reliability, fault tolerance, and greatly extended bearing service
life. The marriage of these advantages with innovative structural netw
ork design and advanced materials utilization will permit major increa
ses in thrust-to-weight performance and structural efficiency for futu
re gas turbine engines. However, obtaining the maximum payoff requires
two key ingredients. The first is the use of modern magnetic bearing
technologies such as innovative digital control techniques, high-densi
ty power electronics, high-density magnetic actuators, fault-tolerant
system architecture, and electronic (sensorless) position estimation.
This paper describes these technologies and the test hardware currentl
y in place for verifying the performance of advanced magnetic actuator
s, power electronics, and digital controls. The second key ingredient
is to go beyond the simple replacement of rolling element bearings wit
h magnetic bearings by incorporating magnetic bearings as an integral
part of the overall engine design. This is analogous to the proper app
roach to designing with composites, whereby the designer tailors the g
eometry and load-carrying function of the structural system or compone
nt for the composite instead of simply substituting composites in a de
sign originally intended for metal material. This paper describes meth
odologies for the design integration of magnetic bearings in gas turbi
ne engines.