User Guide

eMach is an open source codebase designed to facilitate the modeling, evaluation, and optimization of electrical machines. Since machine design is an extremely broad and varied field, eMach is constructed in a modular and flexible fashion to accommodate many machine topologies, evaluation processes, and optimization criteria. While certain base machine optimizations are provided in this repository, the code is intended for easy extension to produce custom optimizations.

The eMach codebase is designed to be used by pygmo, an open source Python optimization library. Documentation for the pygmo library can be found here.

The eMach repository contains three sub-modules which interface between pygmo and each other.

• The mach_opt module, short for Machine Optimization, is defined to interface with the specified fitness function call from pygmo by converting free variables to objective values in a structured format. This module is designed to extend the base functionality of pygmo to handle design optimizations using abstract classes.

• The mach_eval module is used to evaluate a machine design either produced by mach_opt or as stand-alone machines that a user has created. mach_eval is an extension of two of the primary abstract classes in the mach_opt module which provide additional structure and framework to handle more complicated design evaluations.

• The mach_cad module is used for drawing machine components in CAD tools. It provides an abstraction layer between the machine geometry specification and the CAD tool so that multiple tools can equivalently render the same design. This module is intended to provide a link between mach_eval and CAD tools. However, this functionality is not yet implemented.

The layered structure of eMach allows for the higher level modules to be used independently of the lower level packages.

The rest of this document will cover both the mach_opt and mach_eval modules, explaining their purpose and applications.

• 1. Codebase
• 2. mach_eval Module Overview
  • 2.1. MachineDesigner
    • 2.1.1. Architect
    • 2.1.2. SettingsHandler
  • 2.2. MachineEvaluator
    • 2.2.1. EvaluationStep
    • 2.2.2. AnalysisStep
      • 2.2.2.1. ProblemDefinition
      • 2.2.2.2. Analyzer
      • 2.2.2.3. PostAnalyzer
• 3. mach_opt Module Overview
  • 3.1. Designer
  • 3.2. Evaluator
  • 3.3. DesignSpace