Design sensitivity analysis of dynamic responses for a BLDC motor with mechanical and electromagnetic interactions

This paper presents a design sensitivity analysis of dynamic responses of a BLDC motor with mechanical and electromagnetic interactions. Based on the equations of motion which consider mechanical and electromagnetic interactions of the motor, the sensitivity equations for the dynamic responses were derived by applying the direct differential method. From the sensitivity equation along with the equations of motion, the time responses for the sensitivity analysis were obtained by using the Newmark time integration method. The sensitivities of the motor performances such as the electromagnetic torque, rotating speed, and vibration level were analyzed for the six design parameters of rotor mass, shaft/bearing stiffness, rotor eccentricity, winding resistance, coil turn number, and residual magnetic flux density. Furthermore, to achieve a higher torque, higher speed, and lower vibration level, a new BLDC motor was designed by applying the multi-objective function method. It was found that all three performances are sensitive to the design parameters in the order of the coil turn number, magnetic flux density, rotor mass, winding resistance, rotor eccentricity, and stiffness. It was also found that the torque and vibration level are more sensitive to the parameters than the rotating speed. Finally, by applying the sensitivity analysis results, a new optimized design of the motor resulted in better performances. The newly designed motor showed an improved torque, rotating speed, and vibration level. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work was supported by a Korea Research Foundation Grant funded by the Korean government (MOEHRD, Basic Research Promotion Fund, KRF-2007-521-D00020)