Minimizing thrust fluctuation in moving-magnet permanent-magnet brushless linear DC motors

We present the results of our resarch on the factors that cause thrust fluctuation in moving-magnet-type permanent-magnet brushless DC linear motors (PMBLDCLM). We combined Fourier transforms and finite-element models to obtain the power spectra of three components of the detent force. We developed a method of optimizing magnet width to minimize the detent force on the basis of harmonic analysis. To verify this method, we designed several motor models with different magnet widths and analyzed them by finite-element methods. The calculations and experimental results prove that thrust fluctuation of the motor can be effectively reduced with our method.