Simulation of Waveforms of a Ferrite Inductor with Saturation and Power Losses

Materials (Basel). 2014 Mar 4;7(3):1850-1865. doi: 10.3390/ma7031850.

Abstract

We propose a model of an equivalent electrical circuit specifically designed for a ferrite inductor excited by a sinusoidal waveform. The purpose of this model is its use in a circuit simulator. We calculate the model parameters by means of Finite Elements in 2D which leads to significant computational advantages over the 3D model. We carry out the validation for a toroidal ferrite inductor by comparing the experimental results and computed ones. We consider the saturation and power losses in the core. In addition, we have tested the model for the case of square waveform in order to generalize the results. We find excellent agreement between the experimental data and the results obtained by numerical calculations.

Keywords: Finite Element Analysis (FEA); ferrite cores; nonlinear inductors; power losses.