Ant colony optimization for the topological design of interior permanent magnet (IPM) machines

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to apply an Ant colony optimization approach for the solution of the topological design of interior permanent magnet (IPM) machines.

Design/methodology/approach

The IPM motor design domain is discretized into a suitable equivalent graph representation and an Ant System (AS) algorithm is employed to achieve an efficient distribution of materials into this graph.

Findings

The single-objective problems associated with the maximization of the torque and with the maximization of the shape smoothness of the IPM are investigated. The rotor of the device is discretized into a 9×18 grid in both cases, and three different materials are considered: air, iron and permanent magnet.

Research limitations/implications

The graph representation used enables the solution of topological design problems with an arbitrary number of materials, which is relevant for 2 and 3D problems.

Originality/value

From the numerical experiments, the AS algorithm was able to achieve reasonable shapes and torque values for both design problems. The results show the relevance of the mechanism for multi-domain topology optimization of electromagnetic devices.

Citation

S. Batista, L., Campelo, F., G. Guimarães, F., A. Ramírez, J., Li, M. and A. Lowther, D. (2014), "Ant colony optimization for the topological design of interior permanent magnet (IPM) machines", COMPEL - The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, Vol. 33 No. 3, pp. 927-940. https://doi.org/10.1108/COMPEL-08-2013-0285