A comparative study of five-phase outer-rotor flux-switching permanent magnet (FSPM) machines with different topologies for in-wheel traction applications is presented in this paper. Those topologies include double-layer winding, single-layer winding, C-core, and E-core configurations. The electromagnetic performance in the low-speed region, the flux-weakening capability in the high-speed region, and the fault-tolerance capability are all investigated in detail. The results indicate that the E-core FSPM machine has performance advantages. Furthermore, two kinds of E-core FSPM machines with different stator and rotor pole combinations are optimized, respectively. In order to reduce the computational burden during the large-scale optimization process, a mathematical technique is developed based on the concept of computationally efficient finite-element analysis. While a differential evolution algorithm serves as a global search engine to target optimized designs. Subsequently, multiobjective tradeoffs are presented based on a Pareto-set for 20 000 candidate designs. Finally, an optimal design is prototyped, and some experimental results are given to confirm the validity of the simulation results in this paper
