Using The Particle Swarm Evolutionary Approach in Shape Optimization and Field Analysis of Devices Involving Non-linear Magnetic Media

In the past years extensive efforts have been directed towards the development of shape optimization methodologies for electromagnetic devices. In cases when nonlinear magnetic behavior is expected to affect performance, the optimization process becomes more complicated and has to be closely coupled with field computation techniques capable of handling this non-linearity. Common examples involved the exchange of computational results between an optimization module and a finite element package to achieve the optimum shape design. Recently, the particle swarm optimization (PSO) evolutionary approach has been successfully utilized in the computation of magnetic fields for devices involving non-linear magnetic media. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how shape optimization and field analysis of such devices may be carried out using the same PSO computation module and without the involvement of other computational tools.