A multi-purpose control and power electronic architecture for active magnetic actuators

This paper shows the results related with the design and implementation of a multi-purpose electronic architecture used to drive magnetic actuators by means of a three-phase independent-legs module in place of the commonly used H-bridge modules. The typical application is the magnetic actuators drive used in active magnetic bearings. The architecture is composed of a control unit with a floating point Digital Signal Processor (DSP), a power board with six independent phase legs and a carrier board to interconnect them. When more than one module is required by the application, the communication between them is guaranteed by means of CAN bus interconnection. The proposed system allows to drive two pairs of opposite electromagnets, such as those typically used to control active magnetic bearings. The study is motivated by the opportunity of reducing the amount of power and control electronic components resulting in a more straightforward, efficient and cost reduction design.