Design Aspects of Bearingless Slice Motors

The complexity of a bearingless motor offers a multitude of freedoms in constructive design because different motor setups may have nearly the same dynamic behavior, and may differ only slightly in some operation characteristic. However, the mechanical setup often has a very strong impact on the power inverter topology and the volt-ampere requirements, thereby affecting the system costs significantly. This paper focuses on design aspects of bearingless slice motors with permanent magnet excitation, and presents a methodical evaluation approach based on performance indexes.