Comparison of Excitation Signals in Active Magnetic Bearing System Identification

Active magnetic bearings (AMBs) offer frictionless suspension, vibration insulation, programmable stiffness, and damping, among other advantages, in levitated rotor applications. However, AMBs are inherently unstable and require accurate system models for the high-performance model-based multi-input multi-output control of rotor position. Control electronics with high calculation capacity and accurate sensors of AMBs provide an opportunity to implement various identification schemes. A variety of artificial excitation signal-based identification methods can thus be achieved with no additional hardware. In this paper, a selection of excitation signals, namely the pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS), chirp signal, multisine, and stepped sine are presented, applied, and compared with the AMB system identification. From the identification experiments, the rotor-bearing system, the inner current control loop, and values of position and current stiffness are identified. Unlike recently published works considering excitation-based identification of AMB rotor systems, it is demonstrated that identification of the rotor system dynamics can be carried out using various well-established excitation signals. Application and feasibility of these excitation signals in AMB rotor systems are analyzed based on experimental results.