Verification of a novel 5-axis active control type bearingless canned motor pump utilizing passive magnetic bearing function for high power

A centrifugal pump that employs a bearingless motor with 5-axis active control has been developed. In this paper, a novel bearingless canned motor pump is proposed, and differences from the conventional structure are explained. A key difference between the proposed and conventional bearingless canned motor pumps is the use of passive magnetic bearings; in the proposed pump, the amount of permanent magnets (PMs) is reduced by 30% and the length of the rotor is shortened. Despite the decrease in the total volume of PMs, the proposed structure can generate large suspension forces and high torque compared with the conventional design by the use of the passive magnetic bearings. In addition, levitation and rotation experiments demonstrated that the proposed motor is suitable for use as a bearingless canned motor pump.