Tubular electromagnetic actuators represent a very good alternative to pneumatic or hydraulic drives in industrial applications that need fast response, precision, or flexibility and high reliability.
They offer new solutions for direct-drive systems in fields like household appliances, vehicle accessories, industrial manufacturing, robotics and microsurgery. The permanent-magnet topology’s characterization represents the issue of this work and the reason of its choice yields from the advantage of a simple design, high force/energy density, fast response and good servo characteristics. The use of rare earth magnets (NdFeB) with high density of magnetic energy offer more possibilities to the designers.
The configuration whose electromagnetic behaviour is analyzed here is a three-phase, slotted, permanent-magnet tubular actuator, with buried NdFeB magnets