Sensitivity Analysis and Optimal Design of a Dual Mechanical Port Bidirectional Flux-Modulated Machine

This paper presents an optimal design methodology of a dual-mechanical-port bidirectional flux-modulated machine for electric continuously variable transmission in hybrid electrical vehicles. The machine utilizes bidirectional flux modulation effect to combine two rotors and one stator together, aiming to realize electrical and mechanical power flexible split and combination. Due to the complexity of the machine structure, conventional optimization methods using analytical model are inapplicable. Therefore, an effective and practical method that combines the genetic algorithm and finite-element method (GA-FEM) is proposed to optimize the design of the machine in this paper. Since the computational cost increases exponentially with the increasing of number of design parameters, to reduce the computational cost in the optimization process, the design parameters are divided into two levels basing on a sensitivity analysis. And, then, the sensitive parameters are optimized using the GA-FEM coupled method. Finally, a prototype is fabricated to verify the effectiveness of the optimal design.