Deciphering Innovative Principles for Optimal Electric Brushless DC Permanent Magnet Motor Design

This paper shows how a routine design optimization task can be enhanced to decipher important and innovative design principles which shall provide far-reaching knowledge about the problem at hand. Although the 'innovization' task for this purpose was proposed by the first author elsewhere, the application to a brushless D.C. permanent magnet motor design is the first real application of the innovization concept to a discrete optimization problem. The model for cost and peak-torque objectives and associated constraints are borrowed from an existing study. The extent of knowledge gained in designing high-performing yet low-cost motors achieved in this study is phenomenal and should motivate other practitioners to pursue similar studies in other design and optimization related activities.