Computationally Efficient Leakage Inductance Estimation of Multi-Winding Medium Frequency Transformers

Abstract:
This paper describes the technical challenges of leakage inductance estimation of multi-winding medium frequency transformers for design optimization purposes, where besides the estimation accuracy, the computational cost represents an equally important figure of merit. While it is possible to very accurately model the leakage inductance of typical 2-winding transformer geometries, using light-weight analytical models, in case of multi-winding structures, all of the available methods resort to some type of computationally intensive numerical methods, e.g. solving of numeric integrals or finite elements method. These methods offer good accuracy, but their execution time is often a limiting factor when it comes to multi-variable optimization. To that end, this paper proposes a computationally efficient leakage inductance model for multi-winding transformers, developed to yield very fast execution.