In industrialized countries cardiovascular diseases are the major cause of death. The last clinical therapy option for some patients, suffering from terminal heart diseases, is donor heart transplantation. As the available number of donor organs is decreasing, many patients die while waiting for a transplant. For this reason Ventricular Assist Devices (VADs), which can mechanically support the human heart to achieve a sufficient perfusion of the body, are under development. For an implantable VAD, design constraints have to be deduced from the physiological conditions in the human body. In case of a VAD drive, these constraints are for example dimensions, electric losses, which might result in an overheating of blood, and a long durability. Therefore a hybrid permanent magnet hydrodynamic bearing is designed in this paper, which works passively and contactless. Based on Finite Element simulations of magnetic fields, various permanent magnet topologies are studied in terms of axial forces and stiffness.
The paper presents a numerical model of the novel design of the axial magnetic bearing with six cylindrical poles. The motivation behind this idea was to eliminate vibrations in rotating machinery due to the axial load. Common conception of such a bearing provides a single component of the electromagnetic force, which is not enough to reduce transverse and lateral vibrations of the armature. The proposed design allows for avoiding wobbling of the disc with the use of a few axial force components that are able to actively compensate the axial load and stabilise the disc in a balanced position. Before a real device is manufactured, a virtual prototype should be prepared. The accurate numerical model will provide essential knowledge about the performance of the axial magnetic bearing.
Electro-dynamic passive magnetic bearings are now viewed as a feasible option when looking for support for high-speed rotors. Nevertheless, because of the skew-symmetrical visco-elastic properties of such bearings, they are prone to operational instability. In order to avoid this, the paper proposes the addition of external damping into the newly designed vibrating laboratory rotor-shaft system. This may be achieved by means of using simple passive dampers that would be found among the components of the electro-dynamic bearing housings along with magnetic dampers, which satisfy the operational principles of active magnetic bearings. Theoretical investigations are going to be conducted by means of a structural computer model of the rotor-shaft under construction, which will take into consideration its actual dimensions and material properties. The additional damping magnitudes required to stabilize the most sensitive lateral eigenmodes of the object under consideration have been determined by means of the Routh-Hurwitz stability criterion.