An artificial intelligence approach to the efficiency improvement of a universal motor

This paper presents a design approach for improvement of the efficiency of a universal motor, the type of motor that is typically used in home appliances and power tools. The goal of our optimization was to find optimal values of the independent geometrical parameters of the rotor and the stator of the UM with the aim of reducing the motor's main power losses-they occur in the iron and the copper. Our procedure is based on a genetic algorithm (GA), and by using it we were able to significantly improve the motor's efficiency. The GA proved to be a simple and efficient search-and-optimization method for solving this day-to-day design problem in industry. It significantly outperformed a conventional design procedure that was used previously.