Because the mover and stator of a doubly-fed linear motor are both equipped with three-phase windings, the motor enables contactless energy to be transferred from the stator to the mover. Thus, when a doubly-fed linear motor is used in the linear driving system of trains, neither an overhead line nor a third rail is needed. However, the doubly-fed motor will lead to more severe thrust fluctuation than the unilateral motors. In order to overcome this shortcoming, the thrust fluctuation of the doubly-fed motor should be analyzed. In this paper, an expression for motor thrust is derived. It points out that the slot effect caused by the slotted structure is the main reason for the increase of thrust fluctuation. The method of adopting unequal pole pitch and unequal slot numbers per pole per phase of stator and mover, is proposed to weaken the slot effect when designing the motor slot parameters. Three different motor models are simulated by ANSOFT. The proposed method results in a motor thrust fluctuation coefficient of 8.4%, compared to 49.4% for the conventional method. Therefore, the motor’s thrust fluctuation is effectively suppressed by the proposed method. Because the mover and stator of a doubly-fed linear motor are both equipped with three-phase windings, the motor enables both contactless energy to be transferred from the stator to the mover. driving system of trains, neither an overhead line nor a third rail is needed. However, the doubly-fed motor will lead to more severe thrust fluctuation than the unilateral motors. In order to overcome this shortcoming, the thrust fluctuation of the doubly-fed In this paper, an expression for motor thrust is derived. It points out that the slot effect caused by the slotted structure is the main reason for the increase of thrust fluctuation. The method of selecting unequal pole pitch and unequal slot numbers per pole per phase of stator and mover, is proposed to weaken the slot effect when designing the motor slot parameters. Three different motor models are simulated by ANSOFT. The proposed method results in a motor th The fluctuation of the motor’s coefficient is 8.4%, compared to 49.4% for the conventional method.