Torque Profile Enhancement of a Coaxial Transverse-Radial Flux Magnetic Gear Using Taguchi Optimization Method

Abstract

Torque and rotational speed scaling is a typical requirement of industry for a variety of applications. Magnetic gears benefit from numerous advantages due to their physically isolated rotors. Gearing action in magnetic gears occurs by the interaction of the modulated magnetic fields through modulators. The finite element method is typically utilized throughout the design process for magnetic devices. More than dozens of cases need be evaluated in the optimization procedure of a magnetic device to acquire the optimal size. Thus, it takes considerable time to obtain the optimal case. Taguchi method is originally a design of experiments method that drastically reduces number of experiments. This phenomenon is based on the reduction of output variation using orthogonal arrays. In this paper, a transverse-radial flux magnetic gear is optimized by Taguchi method. Signal-to-noise ratio and analysis of variance approaches are utilized to estimate the effective parameters, participation percentage, and optimal level for each control factor. Finally, a comparison is made between the optimal and initial designs, and it is shown that both the torque ripple and the maximum applicable torque have been improved by 40.03% and 30.83%, respectively.