The interest for the electric traction applications has been growing in the last few years. The optimal design of the electric motor and of the inverter that powers it needs to consider a long list of restrictions and criteria. Because of the fact that the geometry of the motor and the switching strategy are closely linked, the optimization of the traction solution needs to consider both, at the same time.The objective of this thesis is the development of an optimization tool applied for the optimization of an electric traction solution that uses the switched reluctance motor (SRM) fed from a three phase full bridge inverter. The SRM is modeled using Permeance Network Analysis (PNA). The switching technique can be easily integrated in the model, which gives the possibility to run a dynamic analysis. The optimization tool created uses the Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) algorithm, modified for multi-objective problems. The algorithms performances are compared with those of the Genetic Algorithm, using the NSGA-II multi-objective technique and with a classic version of multiple objective particle swarm optimizer (MOPSO).Finally, a SRM prototype is constructed and the drive solution using a full-bridge three phase inverter is implemented. The modeling and optimization tools are thus experimentally validated
