The robust design approach for reducing cogging torque in permanent magnet motors [for CD-ROM spindles]

This paper discusses the robust design method for reducing the cogging torque developed in permanent magnet motors and improving the N/S ratio (noise to signal ratio) between the cogging torque and average operational torque. The robust design method used is Taguchi´s approach which is applied the first time to determine the optimum design parameters of a brushless DC spindle motor used in data storage systems. The results show that the robust design method is a very efficient and effective approach in designing disk drive spindle motors for high performance