Robust Design of an Outer Rotor Permanent Magnet Motor Through Six-Sigma Methodology Using Response Surface Surrogate Model

There is always uncertainty in industrial manufacturing. These uncertainties have an undesirable impact on the products if deterministic optimization approaches are employed. In order to have products as desired, uncertainties must be quantified in the design process. This paper presents a robust design optimization of an outer rotor surface mounted permanent magnet motor with particular application in the hybrid vehicle using the design for six-sigma methodology. Due to very long computational time of robust optimization, a ten high-dimensional surrogate model of the system using the Box-Behnken response surface methodology (RSM) is integrated with the particle swarm optimization (PSO). This causes a significant improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of optimization. The results acquired from RSM are verified by their simulation using the finite-element method, and the accuracy of RSM is proved. Finally, the deterministic and robust optimized motors are simulated in mass production using Monte Carlo analysis, and six-sigma quality achievements are demonstrated.