An Accurate Pseudoempirical Model of Winding Loss Calculation in HF Foil and Round Conductors in Switchmode Magnetics

Abstract

When operating higher up in frequency, the copper losses in transformer windings will significantly rise due to enhanced skin and proximity effect. This leads to a high need to develop new methods to accurately evaluate winding losses at higher frequencies. This paper investigates the effect of different geometrical parameters at a wide range of frequencies in order to propose a pseudoempirical formula for winding loss calculation in high-frequency transformers. A comprehensive analysis of the edge effect and ac resistance is done by performing more than 12 300 2-D finite element simulations on foil and round conductors. Unlike previous studies which mostly focused on specific case studies with limited applications, this model provides very high accuracy, especially where the most common analytical models drastically underestimate the winding losses, with a wide-range applicability which could be of interest for designers to avoid time consuming FEM simulation without compromising with the accuracy. Several transformers are built and the model is experimentally verified with a good agreement.