TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION OF PERMANENT MAGNETS FOR GENERATORS USING LEVEL SET METHODS

Generators are considered as the core application of electromagnetic machines, which require high-cost rare-earth-based permanent magnets. The development of generators is moving toward high efficiency and increased environmental friendliness. Minimizing the use of rare earth materials such as magnetic materials under the premise of machine performance emerges as a challenging task. Topology optimization has been promisingly applied to many application areas as a powerful generative design tool. It can identify the optimal distribution of magnetic material in the defined design space. This paper employs the level-set-based topology optimization method to design the permanent magnet for generators. The machine under study is a simplified 2D outer rotor direct-drive wind power generator. The dynamic and static models of this generator are studied, and the magnetostatic system is adopted to conduct the topology optimization. The optimization goals in this study mainly focused on two aspects, namely the maximization of the system magnetic energy and the generation of a target magnetic field in the region of the air gap. The continuum shape sensitivity analysis is derived by using the material time derivative, the Lagrange multiplier method, and the adjoint variable method. Two numerical examples are investigated, and the effectiveness of the proposed design framework is validated by comparing the performance of the original design against the optimized design.