A NEW DESIGN APPROACH TO THE SHAPE AND TOPOLOGY OPTIMIZATION OF MAGNETIC-SHIELDS

A novel approach to the three-dimensional optimal design of magnetic s hields is presented, in which both shape optimization and topology opt imization are achieved with the aid of numerical magnetic-field analys is. These numerical procedures are implemented by means of the hybrid finite element and boundary element method combined with the genetic a lgorithm. This results in an overall increase in the optimization spee d with acceptable computational accuracy. Finally, some numerical resu lts that demonstrate the validity of the proposed approach are present ed. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.