Techniques for Multilevel Design Optimization of Permanent Magnet Motors

The multilevel method has been presented for design optimization of electrical machines and drive systems for optimal system performances and efficiency in our previous work. For framework design of the multilevel optimization method, four techniques are presented in this paper, including the sizing equation, local sensitivity analysis, global sensitivity analysis, and design of experiments techniques. For each technique, a general and theoretical analysis procedure is presented before the application study. To demonstrate the effectiveness, a permanent magnet claw-pole motor with soft magnetic composite core and 3-D finite-element analysis model is investigated to minimize the material cost and maximize the output power while keeping the volume constant. The calculated motor performance based on this 3-D finite-element model has been verified by the experimental results. As shown, these techniques are simple to implement, and the resultant multilevel optimization framework can significantly improve the motor performance and reduce the required sample number of finite-element analysis.