Performance Investigation of Two-, Three- and Four-Phase Bearingless Slice Motor Configurations

The fact that bearingless slice motors (BSM) are widely used in pump systems in the semiconductor industry and for medical applications has caused the attention of other industries for this emerging technology. Here, costs, power consumption and pump volume play an important role. Since the mechanical setup of the motor has a strong impact on these issues five different motor and converter setups are comparatively evaluated and discussed in this paper. The comparison will be carried out for two-, three- and four-phase BSM concepts based on performance indices such as power losses, power electronics requirements and cost-related realisation issues.