Design of experiments for the controller of rotor systems with a magnetic bearing

A new design methodology for the vibration control of rotor systems with a magnetic bearing is developed in this paper. The methodology combines the experimental design method in quality control engineering and the conventional PD control technique such that their advantages in implementation feasibility and performance-robustness can be integrated together. A quality loss index defined by the summation of the infinity norm of unbalanced vibration is used to characterize the system dynamics. By using the location of the magnetic bearing and PD feedback gains as design parameters, the controller can be determined by a small number of matrix experiments to achieve the best system performance. In addition, it is robust to the vibration modes within a desired speed range. A rotor system consisting of 4 rigid disks, 3 isotropic bearings, and I magnetic bearing is applied to illustrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the experiment-aided controller design.