Research on combination of passive magnetic bearing and mechanical bearing for vertical axis wind turbine

Aiming at the “light wind start, light wind power generation” of vertical axis wind turbine, a new T-shaped radial passive magnetic bearing with high suspension characteristics is proposed. Passive magnetic bearings used in vertical axis wind turbines usually have small bearing capacity and difficult magnetization. The new T-shaped radial PMB can improve the radial bearing capacity, and the three magnetic rings all adopt simple axial magnetization. The new T-shaped radial PMB is combined with mechanical auxiliary bearing to form the suspension system of wind turbine. In the stable state, the suspension system can realize radial and axial stable suspension. The structure and working principle of the suspension system are briefly described. Through the finite element simulation, the characteristics of the new T-shaped radial PMB, the traditional double-ring PMB and the T-shaped PMBs are compared. Taking the high bearing capacity and high stiffness of the new T-shaped radial PMB as the optimization objective, the multi-objective optimization of the new T-shaped radial PMB was carried out by changing its geometric parameters (inner diameter, magnetization length and air gap). The research results show that: Under the same bearing capacity, the volume of the new T-shaped radial PMB is reduced by about 78.64%. Under the same volume, its bearing capacity increased by about 30.7%, and its stiffness increased by about 96.1%. After optimization, its radial bearing capacity increased to 101.38 N, and its stiffness increased to 202.76 N/mm.