Minimization of a Cogging Torque for an Interior Permanent Magnet Synchronous Machine using a Novel Hybrid Optimization Algorithm

Optimization of an electric machine is mainly a nonlinear multi-modal problem. For the optimization of the multi-modal problem, many function calls are required with much consumption of time. To address this problem, this paper proposes a novel hybrid algorithm in which function calls are less than conventional methods. Specifically, the proposed method uses the kriging metamodel and the fill-blank technique to find an approximated solution in a whole problem region. To increase the convergence speed in local peaks, a parallel gradient assisted simplex method is proposed and combined with the kriging meta-model. The correctness and usefulness of the proposed hybrid algorithm is verified through a mathematical test function and applied into the practical optimization as the cogging torque minimization for an interior permanent magnet synchronous machine.