Analytical prediction of cogging torque in surface-mounted permanent-magnet motors

We present a new approach to computing cogging torque based on only one analytical field solution in surface-mounted permanent-magnet (PM) motors. We use conformal transformation to compute the magnetic field created by the permanent magnets in the air gap with a single slot. Then, we derive the cogging torque due to the single-slot effect at different rotor positions directly from the 2-D analytical field solution. The total cogging torque is synthesized from the contribution of each slot. We have applied our approach to predicting the cogging torque of two surface-mounted PM motors, one with 4 poles, 24 slots and the other with 42 poles, 36 slots. The predicted cogging torques for both applications agree well with those obtained from 2-D finite-element analysis.