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

• Lucas S. Batista ^[1] ; Felipe Campelo ^[1] ; Frederico G. Guimaraes ^[1] ; Jaime A. Ramírez ^[1] ; Min Li ^[2] ; David A. Lowther ^[2]
  1. [1] Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

     Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais

     Brasil

     
  2. [2] McGill University

     McGill University

     Canadá

     
• Localización: Compel: International journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering, ISSN 0332-1649, Vol. 33, Nº 3 (Special Issue: OIPE 2012), 2014, págs. 927-940
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen

  • 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.