Application of a permanent magnet biased E-Core reluctance actuator in a magnetically suspended ceiling actuator

In the paper a novel actuator is presented for a magnetically suspended ceiling actuator. The actuator consists of several stator segments which contain the coils and the magnets. The armature, therefore, has a totally passive design. Because of its salient structure, a translational force can be produced for motion of the armature. The magnets create a passive attraction force for failsafe operation, which can be controlled for magnetically suspending the armature. Decoupling of the attraction and translational force, however, is complex, because they are strongly coupled. Therefore, position and current dependent force models are created based on curve fitting of inductances. It is shown that using these models, decoupling of the attraction and translational force in the ceiling actuator is possible.