DESIGN OPTIMIZATION OF A BLDC MOTOR BY GENETIC ALGORITHM AND SIMULATED ANNEALING

1
1

Kondapalli Siva Rama Rao and 2Azrul Hisham Bin Othman

Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, 31750 Tronoh, Perak, Malaysia (e-mail: ksramarao@petronas.com.my) 2 Ethlyne (M) Sdn Bhd, Kompleks Industri Petroleum PETRONAS, 24300, Kertih,Terengganu, Malaysia (e-mail: rul_f1@yahoo.com)

Abstract-This paper presents the application of Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA) techniques for optimal design and analysis of a Brushless DC Motor (BLDC) widely used in many industrial motion control apparatus and systems. The design procedure of permanent magnet electronically commutated BLDC motor is much different from that of traditional motors. Single and multi-objective functions of the motor are derived based on the steady state mathematical model. A constrained optimization on the objective function is performed using Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA), and optimal parameters are obtained. The resulting effects of varying GA parameters such as population size, number of generations, and probability of mutation and crossover, are also presented. The optimal design parameters of the motor derived by GA are compared with those obtained by SA, another stochastic combinatorial optimization technique.
Index Terms - Brushless DC motor, Optimization, Non-linear Programming, Genetic Algorithm, Simulated Annealing.

motor design analysis is combined with the optimization techniques. The scope of the paper revolves around computer design and analysis, and no prototype hardware is involved. II. GENETIC ALGORITHM AND SIMULATED ANNEALING
APPROACHES

I. INTRODUCTION The permanent magnet brushless DC (BLDC) motor is increasingly being used in fractional horse power range for industrial and household applications for its higher efficiency. BLDC motor stator is like that of an induction motor and the rotor has permanent magnets. BLDC motor is also referred to as an electronically commutated motor as the commutation is performed electronically at certain rotor positions [1]. The steady state analysis of a BLDC motor supports the design procedure to derive the expressions of the main electrical, magnetic, mechanical and thermal quantities as a function of the machine dimensions and working conditions. The mathematical model is highly nonlinear and an optimal design needs a non-linear programming technique satisfying the performance constraints. In this paper two stochastic optimization techniques are reported to arrive at the optimal parameters of a 3-phase BLDC motor. The analytical procedure of the

The optimal design parameters of the motor reported in this paper are based on the steady state non-linear mathematical model forming an objective function together with important constraints and two stochastic optimization methods are used to minimize the objective function. Optimal design problems require a search for the global minimum of the objective function [2, 3]. As there is no single best method for non-linear optimization problems, a method based on characteristics of the problem to be solved is to be selected. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) learns to approximate a function and methods based on ANN evolve the fitness function to reach the nearest local minimum, and stop there [4]. Also training of the neural networks is an optimization problem itself. The local minimization methods such as random search, gradient method and Powells method need a feasible or infeasible staring vector of design variables to arrive at an optimal solution. The final optimal solution is selected after experimenting with a number of starting vectors of design variables and allowing considerable computational time for each optimal solution. Random or enumerated search is an unintelligent strategy and is rarely used. Gradient method for well-behaved functions is based on the information of gradient of the function. Gradient methods perform well for uni-modal functions but fails when the function is discontinuous. Powells method is claimed to be the most efficient among the direct search methods, using conjugate directions and the property of quadratic convergence [5]. Among the other methods designed for global optimization GA and SA are two popular stochastic methods adopting randomly generated solutions. Both the methods are often viewed as quite separate, competing paradigms in the field

of modern heuristics [6]. GA deals with individuals (or chromosomes), their fitness function and the GA parameters where as SA concentrates on solutions, their objective functions such as cost. SA can be thought as GA where the population size is only one, creates a new solution by modifying the current solution with a local move. GA is said to be a robust approach and far less sensitive to parameter values than SA [6-8]. In this paper both GA and SA approaches are used to derive the optimal parameters of the BLDC motor with single and multi-objective functions. III. GENETIC ALGORITHM The GA is based on natural selection, the process that drives biological evolution [9] and repeatedly modifies a population of initial solutions. It selects the individuals at random from the current population, uses crossover and mutation operators, and over the successive generations, the population evolves toward an optimal solution. In contrast to more traditional numerical techniques, the parallel nature of the stochastic search done by GA often makes it very effective to arrive at global optimum. Also GA offers a convenient way of handling constraints and single or multi objective functions. In GA approach, each design variable represented as a binary string (chromosome) of fixed length is evaluated by using a fitness function. GA provides solutions by generating a set of chromosomes referred to as a generation. If the search has to continue, the GA creates a new generation from the old one until a decision is made on the convergence. A crossover operator exchanges information contained in two parent individuals to produce two offspring and then replace the parents. The number of times the crossover operator is applied to the population is determined by the probability of crossover and the population size. The mutation operator randomly selects an individual from the population and then chooses two elements in this individual to exchange positions. A binary tournament selection strategy is used in this paper to select the fittest individuals where two individuals are selected at random from the current population, and the better one is duplicated in the next generation. This process is repeated until the individuals reach a specified population size. GA is less susceptible to getting stuck at local optima than gradient search methods. Also, GA is much less sensitive to initial conditions and is widely used in various optimization problems [9]. IV. SIMULATED ANNEALING The SA algorithm is based on the analogy between the annealing of solids and the problem of solving optimization problems. Annealing is the physical process of heating up a solid and then cooling it down slowly until it crystallizes. The states of the solid represent feasible solutions of the optimization problem, the energies of the states correspond to the values of the objective function computed at those solutions, the minimum energy state correspond to the

optimal solution to the problem. The algorithm consists of a sequence of iterations and each iteration step randomly changes the current solution to create a new solution in the neighborhood of the current solution [10, 11]. SA, a Monte Carlo method can be modeled mathematically using the theory of finite Markov chains. A Markov chain is defined as a sequence of trials, where the probability of the outcome of a given trial depends only on the outcome of the previous trial. In the case of SA, a trial corresponds to a move, and the set of outcomes is given by a finite set of neighbouring states. Each move depends only on the outcome of the previous attempt, so the concept of Markov chains applies. The cooling schedule, consisting of a set of parameters, governs the convergence of optimization algorithm. These parameters are, an initial value of the control parameter (i.e. temperature), a decrement function for lowering the value of the control parameter, a final value of the control parameter specified by a stop criterion and a finite length of each homogeneous Markov chain. An assumed initial solution of design vector of variables is also required for initiating the process of optimization of the objective function. V. DESIGN VARIABLES, OBJECTIVE FUNCTION, AND
CONSTRAINTS

The design optimization of BLDC motor is to estimate

X = x1, x 2 , ......, x n such that F ( X ) is minimum, subject to g j ( X ){=}0, j = 1, 2, ...., m with X 0

being a non negative solution. F ( X ) and g j ( X ) are the nonlinear objective and constraint functions. As the objective function of the BLDC motor is highly nonlinear with the presence of equality and inequality constraints, it is transformed into an unconstrained optimization problem by adding a measure of the constraint violation (some penalty function) to the objective function [7]. Using exterior penalty function method, an augmented objective function, P is formulated as:

P( X , r ) = F ( X ) + r g j ( X ) , r 0
j =1

where r is the penalty factor and is set to a value of 1000 in both GA and SA techniques. The design analysis equations, with ten design variables which mainly describe the geometry of a 3-phase, 4-pole, 314-W, 24-V, 7500-rpm BLDC motor, are derived [12]. The active materials volume, weight and cost are the single objective functions and a combination with proper weighting coefficients is formed as a multi-objective function. Seven constraints are imposed while minimizing the objective functions. In GA technique, each design variable is coded as a 16 bit binary string [13, 14]. The performance of GA and SA optimization techniques is demonstrated in this paper for the example motor and the results are presented.

VI. RESULTS OF GA AND SA OPTIMIZATION In GA technique increasing the population size enables to search more points at each generation and obtain a better result. However, the larger the population size, the longer the GA takes to compute each generation [15]. Different settings for population size that return good results are experimented, without taking a prohibitive amount of computer time to run. The design analysis program of the 3phase BLDC motor together with GA technique is initially tested with population sizes of 50, 100, and 200. Similarly the program is experimented with probabilities of crossover of 0.25, 0.5 and 0.75. The number of generations is varied from 50 to 600 in steps. After experimenting GA simulations with different combinations of GA parameters, it is observed that better optimal values are returned from design analysis program with the parameters listed in Table 1.
TABLE 1 GA PARAMETERS Population size Maximum number of generations Probability of mutation Probability of crossover 100 600 0.01 0.75
1.1

Multi-objective function (GA)

1.05

Units

0.95

0.9 0 50 100 200 300 400

Number of generations

500

600

Fig. 2. Multi-objective function GA

The accuracy of the SA optimization depends on the cooling rate and the number of iterations. Determining the SA parameters is a challenge with annealing. After experimenting SA simulations with different combinations, better results are returned with the initial temperature as 125 C, the factor for reducing the initial temperature as 0.75, the factor for reducing the neighborhood size as 0.95, the Markov chain length as 80, and maximum number of iterations as 300. Figs. 3 and 4 show the optimal single and multi-objective functions, respectively, for varying number of iterations.
Single objective functions and efficiency (Simulated Annealing)
efficiency cost weight volume

The three single objective functions are minimized independently with the imposed constraints. Increasing the maximum number of generations, the GA runs often improves the final result. The results of efficiency and single objective functions for varying the number of generations are shown in Fig. 1.

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0 0

50

100

Single objective functions and efficiency (Genetic Algorithm)

1 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0

Number of iterations

150

200

250

300

Fig. 3. Single objective functions SA

efficiency cost weight volume
Units

Multi-objective function (SA)

1.45 1.4 1.35 1.3 1.25 1.2 1.15 1.1 1.05 1 0.95 0.9 0 50 100 200 300 400 500 600

50

100

200

300

400

500

600

Number of Generations

Number of iterations

Fig. 1. Single objective functions GA

From the single objective functions of volume, weight and cost, a multi-objective function is formed with suitable weight coefficients. Simulations are performed with the same GA parameters and the multi-objective function is minimized. The performance results of the objective function with the variation of number of generations is presented in Fig. 2.

Fig. 4. Multi-objective function SA

The results as shown in Figs. 1 to 4 are satisfactory and the global optimum objective function values are reached after 200 generations in GA and 200 iterations in SA. The optimal design variables and other optimal parameters obtained from design analysis program are presented in Tables 2 and 3 respectively.

VII. COMPARISON OF GA AND SA METHODS The design variables and the other design parameters of the BLDC motor are obtained from design analysis program, after 600 generations by GA technique, and with a penalty factor of 1000. The results obtained by SA method after 300 iterations are compared in Tables 2 and 3.
TABLE 2 OPTIMIZED DESIGN VARIABLES FROM GA AND SA X x1 x2 x3 x4 x5 x6 x7 x8 x9 x10 Design variables Rotor diameter, mm Air gap length, mm Magnet thickness, mm Half -pole angle, rad Stator outer diameter, mm Stator tooth width, mm Stator slot height, mm Open fill factor Slot wedge height, mm Length of core, mm GA 20.00 0.10 1.00 0.88 50.00 2.98 8.00 0.48 2.64 40.00 SA 20.00 0.20 1.03 0.90 50.00 2.59 8.02 0.46 3.00 40.00

optimization but GA on the other hand randomly generates the solutions. The results on design optimization demonstrated that both the methods returned global optimal solutions. VIII. CONCLUSIONS This paper describes the design procedure for the optimal design of a BLDC motor using GA and SA. The results obtained by GA technique are compared with SA which also used C/C++ coding. From the simulation results, it is observed that GA performed better than SA for BLDC motor design. Both GA and SA optimization techniques are proved to be efficient powerful tools for obtaining global optimal solutions of the BLDC motor compared to traditional design procedures. Optimal solutions show that GA is more efficient than SA and it is proved that the accuracy of the optimal parameters is similar in both the methods. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS for this work. REFERENCES
Freescale Semiconductor, Brushless DC motor. Available: http://www.freescale.com/webapp/sps/site/overview.jsp?node Id=02nQX GrrlPY7r8hv0V [2] N.Bianchi,S.bolognani, Design optimization of electric motors by genetic algorithm, IEE Proceedings on Electric Power Application, vol. 145, no. 6, Sept. 1998. [3] B. Benedicic and G. Papa, Evolutionary Optimization of a Universal Motor, in Proc. 2001 IEEE 27th Annual Conference IECON01. [4] I. Galkin and U. M. Lowell, Crash introduction to artificial neural networks, Data Mining Course, Rep. Materials for UML 91.531. [5] M. J. D. Powell, An efficient method for finding the minimum of a function of several variables without calculating derivatives, Computer Journal, (7), pp. 155-162, 1964. [6] J. Kohoner, A brief comparison of simulated annealing and genetic algorithm approaches, Department of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, Rep. 1999. [7] D. Dumitrescu, B. Lazzerini, L.C. Jain and A. Dumitrescu, Evolutionary computation, CRC Press LLC, Florida, 2000. [8] D. R. Thompson and G. I. Bilbro, Comparison of a genetic algorithm with a simulated annealing algorithm for the design of an ATM network, IEEE Communications Letters, 4(8), 2000, pp. 267-269. [9] N. Chaiyaratana and A.M.S. Zalzala, Recent developments in evolutionary and genetic algorithms: Theory and applications, in Proc. 1997 IEE Conference on Genetic Algorithms in Engineering Systems: Innovations and Applications, 446, 1997, pp. 270-277. [10] Franco Busetti, Simulated Annealing Overview, Rep. 2003. [11] J. L. Foo, C. K. Leong and C. P. Tang, A Web-Based Simulated Annealing Application Tool, Final Project, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2002. [12] A. H. B. Othman, Optimal design of a BLDC motor by Genetic Algorithm, Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia, Rep. Jun. 2007. [13] L. D. Chambers, Genetic Algorithm Complex Coding Systems, vol. 3, CRC Press, 1999. [14] L. Jolly, M. A. Jabbar and L. Qinghua, Design Optimization of Permanent Magnet Motors Using Response Surface Methodology and [1]

TABLE 3 OPTIMIZED DESIGN PARAMETERS FROM GA AND SA Optimal values Stator bore diameter, mm Length of core, mm Air gap length, mm Magnet thickness, mm External diameter, mm Electrical load, A/m Air gap flux density, T Rotor yoke flux density, T Tooth flux density, T Current density, A/mm2 Weight of magnets, kg Weight of core, kg Weight of copper, kg Volume of active materials, mm3 Iron losses, W Copper losses, W Stray losses, W Winding temperature, C Efficiency Cost of active material, RM Multi objective function Execution time, s GA 22.00 40.00 0.10 1.00 50.00 30122 0.91 1.40 1.60 7.81 0.049 0.29 0.14 60600 1.90 14.29 3.14 55.50 95.30 21.91 0.962 7.34 SA 22.40 40.00 0.20 1.00 50.00 29851 0.91 1.40 1.57 8.63 0.046 0.31 0.135 61362 1.95 15.91 3.14 61.40 93.40 22.05 0.971 5.25

It is observed from the Tables 2 and 3 that the optimal solutions derived by GA proved to be better than those obtained by SA method. The multi-objective function value by Genetic Algorithm is more optimally minimum (0.962) than derived by Simulated Annealing (0.971). The execution time for each simulation is about 7.34 sec for GA and 5.25 sec for SA. As GA deals with large number of generations and population size, it takes slightly more time to achieve the most optimum solution. Like any traditional non-linear programming technique, SA needs an initial guess solution of design variables to initiate the process of

Genetic Algorithm, IEEE Trans. Magnetics, vol. l 41, no. 10, Oct. 2005. [15] M. A. Natick, Genetic Algorithm and direct search toolbox, version 1, The Mathworks, Inc., 2003.

BIOGRAPHIES
K.S. Rama Rao received his B.E.(Hons.), M.Sc.(Engg.) and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Andhra University, University of Madras, IIT Kanpur, India, respectively, in the years 1962, 1963 and 1979. He was in the faculty of Electrical Engineering, J N T University College of Engineering, Kakinada, India from 1963 to 1999. He became a Professor in 1990 and worked as Director from 1999 to 2002. He was in the faculty, School of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia from May 2002 to 2006. He joined Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia in Mar 2006. His current research interests are in power electronics, dc and ac drives, design optimization of electrical machines and special purpose transformers. He has published number of technical papers and has been actively associated in teaching, research and consultancy. Azrul Hisham Bin Othman received his B. Engg. (Hons) in electrical and electronics Engineering from Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Malaysia in Sep. 2007. He is working as Procurement Executive, Ethylene (M) Sdn Bhd., Malaysia. His current research interests are in power systems and electric drives.