Development and Testing of an Axial Halbach Magnetic Bearing

The NASA Glenn Research Center has developed and tested a revolutionary Axial Halbach Magnetic Bearing. The objective of this work is to develop a viable non-contact magnetic thrust bearing utilizing Halbach arrays for all-electric flight, and many other applications. This concept will help to reduce harmful emissions, reduce the Nation s dependence on fossil fuels and mitigate many of the concerns and limitations encountered in conventional axial bearings such as bearing wear, leaks, seals and friction loss. The Axial Halbach Magnetic Bearing is inherently stable and requires no active feedback control system or superconductivity as required in many magnetic bearing designs. The Axial Halbach Magnetic Bearing is useful for very high speed applications including turbines, instrumentation, medical systems, computer memory systems, and space power systems such as flywheels. Magnetic fields suspend and support a rotor assembly within a stator. Advanced technologies developed for particle accelerators, and currently under development for maglev trains and rocket launchers, served as the basis for this application. Experimental hardware was successfully designed and developed to validate the basic principles and analyses. The report concludes that the implementation of Axial Halbach Magnetic Bearings can provide significant improvements in rotational system performance and reliability.