Abstract
In optimal design of a permanent magnet (PM) motor, many design variables are required to consider some device properties. These variables are, for example, the shape of core and magnet, the tooth length, the number of turns, and the winding radius. Moreover, many restrictions must be considered in practical PM motor design. These restrictions are, for example, the slot space factor and the cogging torque. However, the optimization problem, which has many design variables by the finite element method (FEM), has not been reported. In this paper, the efficiency of PM motor under the considerations given above is optimized by using FEM and optimization algorithm. In this problem, an objective function has many local minima and it is difficult to calculate its gradient. For these reasons, the genetic algorithm (GA) and simulated annealing method (SA), which are stochastic methods, are used for optimization method, because of the possibility of global range search and because gradient calculation is not required. Adding to both optimization methods, in this paper, SA combined with GA is used for one of the optimization methods. It is found that the solutions optimized by these methods are reasonable from an engineering point of view. Β© 2001 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 138(3): 72β79, 2002