This work proposes Isogeometric Analysis as an alternative to classical finite elements for simulating electric machines. Through the spline-based Isogeometric discretization it is possible to parametrize the circular arcs exactly, thereby avoiding any geometrical error in the representation of the air gap where a high accuracy is mandatory. To increase the generality of the method, and to allow rotation, the rotor and the stator computational domains are constructed independently as multipatch entities. The two subdomains are then coupled using harmonic basis functions at the interface which gives rise to a saddle-point problem. The properties of Isogeometric Analysis combined with harmonic stator-rotor coupling are presented. The results and performance of the new approach are compared to the ones for a classical finite element method using a permanent magnet synchronous machine as an example.
In this paper two formulations for the robust optimization of the size of the permanent magnet in a synchronous machine are discussed. The optimization is constrained by a partial differential equation to describe the electromagnetic behavior of the machine. The need for a robust optimization procedure originates from the fact that optimization parameters have deviations. The first approach, i.e., worst-case optimization, makes use of local sensitivities. The second approach takes into account expectation values and standard deviations. The latter are associated with global sensitivities. The geometry parametrization is elegantly handled thanks to the introduction of an affine decomposition. Since the stochastic quantities are determined by tools from uncertainty quantification (UQ) and thus require a lot of finite element evaluations, model order reduction is used in order to increase the efficiency of the procedure. It is shown that both approaches are equivalent if a linearization is carried out. This finding is supported by the application on an electric machine. The optimization algorithms used are sequential quadratic programming, particle swarm optimization and genetic algorithm. While both formulations reduce the size of the magnets, the UQ based optimization approach is less pessimistic with respect to deviations and yields smaller magnets.
In this paper, gradient-based optimization methods are combined with finite-element modeling for improving electric devices. Geometric design parameters are considered by piecewise affine parametrizations of the geometry or by the design element approach, both of which avoid remeshing. Furthermore, it is shown how to robustify the optimization procedure, that is, how to deal with uncertainties on the design parameters. The overall procedure is illustrated by an academic example and by the example of a permanent-magnet synchronous machine. The examples show the advantages of deterministic optimization compared to standard and popular stochastic optimization procedures such as particle swarm optimization.
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