Optimal design of a permanent magnet spring

This paper describes the optimization and the performance evaluation of a Permanent Magnet spring. A dedicated semi-analytical model of the device is developed allowing for fast and accurate evaluation of the force vs. displacement characteristic of an arbitrary arrangement of coaxial ring-shaped PMs. This model is used to define the cost function to find the optimal PMs configuration which realizes a magnetic spring with a given characteristic. A stochastic, evolutionary, global optimization algorithm, based on a modified version of the self-organizing map is used. Once the optimal configuration is defined, the electromagnetic damping obtained by properly positioned conductive materials, will be investigated.