Influence of magnetic non-uniformity existing in a rigid rotor supported by a superconducting magnetic bearing on its whirling

Superconducting magnetic bearings (SMBs) have a significant feature over conventional bearings in terms of supporting a shaft without physical contact while attaining its stability without control. In their large-scale rotary applications, magnetization distribution of a rotor in the circumferential direction can be non-uniform and it would be better to know influence of such circumferential magnetic non-uniformity existing in a rotor on its dynamics, especially on its behaviors in the vicinity of the critical speed. In this study, further developing our previous research, we improved our analytical model so that we can adjust several different degrees of magnetic non-uniformity by arranging multiple magnetization vectors and investigated its influence. First, we simulated dynamical behavior of the system by numerical calculations and their results show that, with increasing the degree of magnetic non-uniformity, the whirling amplitude of the system, together with the difference of the amplitudes in the orthogonal directions in the whirling plane, get larger. Further, the rotational frequency at which the whirling amplitude takes its peak gets lower, which is caused by nonlinearity of the electromagnetic force. We carried out experiments and verified our numerical predicions.