Bacterial Foraging Based Optimal Design of Transverse Flux Linear Motor for Thrust Force Improvement

Abstract

Abstract—This article presents a novel optimal design for a permanent magnet excitation transverse flux linear motor with an inner mover using bacterial foraging optimization. The target is maximizing the motor thrust force, which is the most important quantity in linear electric drives. The stator pole length, air-gap length, winding window width, and stator pole width define the search space for the optimization problem. The response surface methodology is used to build the mathematical model of the motor thrust force in terms of the design variables. It can create an objective function easily, and great computational time is saved. Finite-element computations are used for numerical experiments on the geometrical design variables to determine the coefficients of a second-order analytical model for the response surface methodology. The bacterial foraging optimization technique is used as a searching tool under the constraints of design variables for design optimization of the transverse flux linear motor to improve the motor thrust force. The effectiveness of the proposed bacterial foraging optimization model is then compared with that of both genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization models. With this proposed bacterial foraging optimization technique, the thrust force of the initially designed transverse flux linear motor can be increased.

Keywords:

• transverse flux linear motor
• design optimization
• bacterial foraging
• finite-element method
• response surface methodology
• thrust force optimization
• permanent magnet motors
• linear motors
• evolutionary optimization algorithms
• three-dimensional finite-element analysis

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hany M. Hasanien

Hany M. Hasanien received his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Ain Shams University, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo, Egypt, in 1999, 2004, and 2007 respectively. From 2008 to 2011, he was a joint researcher at Kitami Institute of Technology, Kitami, Japan. He is an associate professor at the Electrical Power and Machines Department, Faculty of Engineering, Ain Shams University. Currently, he is on leave as an associate professor at the Electrical Engineering Department, College of Engineering, King Saud University, Riyadh, KSA. He is a senior member of the IEEE and Power & Energy Society (PES). He is an editorial board member of Electric Power Components and Systems. He has been awarded the Encouraging Egypt Award for Engineering Sciences in 2012. His research interests include modern control techniques, power systems dynamics and control, energy storage systems, renewable energy systems, and the smart grid.

Syed Qaseem Ali

Syed Qaseem Ali received his B. Eng. from the NED University of Technology, Karachi, Pakistan in 2008 and his MSEE in power and control from Illinois Institute of Technology in 2010. Currently he is pursuing his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from McGill University, Montreal; he is also affiliated with the Electrical Energy Systems Laboratory at McGill University. Before joining McGill, he worked at the Saudi Aramco Chair in Electrical Power, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a research associate. His research interests include power electronic converters and electric drives and control with application in electric and hybrid electric vehicles.