Optimal design of a surface-mounted permanent magnet motor with multi-grade ferrite magnets to reduce torque pulsations

Abstract

This paper proposes an optimal design for a surface-mounted permanent magnet motor (SPMM) to reduce torque pulsations, including cogging torque and torque ripple, by using multi-grade ferrite magnets. Based on a conventional SPMM with single-grade ferrite magnets, the proposed SPMM is designed with four-grade ferrite magnets and then optimized to minimize torque pulsations by maintaining the required torque, utilizing the Kriging method and a genetic algorithm. The results obtained by the finite element analysis show that the optimized SPMM with multi-grade ferrite magnets exhibits improved airgap flux density distribution with highly reduced cogging torque and torque ripple by maintaining the same average torque, as compared to the conventional SPMM. Furthermore, the analysis of the working points for the multi-grade ferrite magnets reveals that the optimized SPMM has good durability against the irreversible demagnetization.