Abstract
Hybrid air-foil magnetic bearing integrates two oil free bearing technologies synergetically to adopt the strengths of two bearings with minimizing their weaknesses. This paper presents bending mode vibration control of a flexible shaft supported by the hybrid air-foil magnetic bearing. An experiment set-up of a flexible shaft supported by the hybrid air-foil magnetic bearing is built. In order to verify the effectiveness of the hybrid bearing, unbalance responses of the flexible shaft supported by three different bearings: air-foil, magnetic and hybrid bearings are compared. Effect of load sharing between air-foil and magnetic bearings are investigated through changing the control gain and the rotor center position of magnetic bearing. The experimental results shows that the hybrid bearing can control the bending mode vibration of the flexible shaft effectively and an optimal performance can be achieved with an appropriate load sharing between the air-foil and the magnetic bearings.