Passive magnetic bearings for flywheel energy storage - Numerical design. Passive magnetic bearings design

Passive magnetic bearings (PMB) is a new concept of flywheel energy storage systems in which conventional bearings are replaced by magnetic bearings while keeping the rest parts unchanged to increase the rotating speed of the flywheel and while reducing the vibrations of the system. This paper presents the FEM analysis of a several design solutions for PMB. The aim is to compare several design solutions. In this study we used the magnetic scalar potential formulation for the magnetic field problem. This approach allows for relative fast numerical solution, useful in computing the magnetic forces of interest in the PMB design. The forces are computed using the theorem of the generalized forces, a method consistent with the scalar potential formulation (the power losses are neglected). The results conclude the different PMBs performances.