Various force disturbances influence the thrust force of linear motors when a linear motor (LM) is running. Among all of force disturbances, the force ripple is the dominant while a linear motor runs in low speed. In order to suppress the force ripple, back propagation(BP) neural network is proposed to learn the function of the force ripple of linear motors, and the acquisition method of training samples is proposed based on a disturbance observer. An off-line BP neural network is used mainly because of its high running efficiency and the real-time requirement of the servo control system of a linear motor. By using the function, the force ripple is on-line compensated according to the position of the LM. The experimental results show that the force ripple is effectively suppressed by the compensation of the BP neural network.