Radial-type self-bearing motor for nonpulsatile-type artificial heart

Magnetic bearings have been widely used to support rotors without physical contact. Since a power motor has a configuration similar to that of the mag netic bearing, a self-bearing motor is investigated in this study, which ha s functions of both a rotary motor and a magnetic bearing. In this paper we introduce an application of this self-bearing motor to an artificial blood pump. The thin Permanent Magnet(PM)-type self-bearing motor has the capabi lity of controlling x and y directions and of giving a rotating torque acti vely. Other three degrees of freedom are passively stable. In this study, e lectromagnetic field analysis is applied to clarify the passive stability p roblem of the PM rotor using the finite element method. An experimental set up is made and tested to confirm the applicability of the proposed thin PM- type self-bearing motor. The results show a high feasibility of using this motor in the fabrication of a nonpulsatile-type artificial heart.