Finding Optimal Performance Indices of Synchronous AC Motors

The design optimization of electrical machines involves both design and control variables. Finding optimal control variables, however, requires the solution of another optimization problem. Due to high computational cost, the design process is usually carried out with suboptimal values which may lead to suboptimal designs. Thus, in this paper, we propose an optimization framework that emulates the control strategy, in order to find optimal performance indices for each candidate solution. Both the efficacy of the proposed method and a comparison among different “control strategy emulators” are demonstrated for the rotor design optimization of an interior permanent magnet motor and a synchronous reluctance motor.