Optimal design of photovoltaic based submersible permanent magnet BLDC motor using FEM

Optimization plays a crucial role to bring out a trade-off between the cost and efficiency of permanent magnet motors. Optimization algorithm coupled with analytical magnetic circuit analysis, is one such technique to improve the performance of a motor. However, the non-linear effects like saturation, cross-magnetization, etc. are cumbersome to be modelled analytically. In addition, the interdependency between the motor design parameters adds to the complexity in the formulation of an optimization problem. Finite Element Method (FEM) based optimization with stochastic optimization algorithms overcome the said complexities. In this paper, a parametric feasibility analysis is initially carried out to obtain a design prior to optimization of a PV based bore-well submersible "Semi-Modular Dual-Stack" (SMDS) spoke type (ST) Brushless dc (BLDC) motor. Later, the motor model is "parameterized" in MagNet FE environment enabling the feasibility analysis. Further, transient 2D-FEM based multi-objective optimization is carried out using OptiNet Software and the results are presented.