Calculating the iron losses in gapped inductors using the loss-Map method

Abstract

In recent years, inductors and transformers have become increasingly important factors in power electronics circuit design, not only because their volume is now a dominant aspect in these circuits, but also because their losses sometimes cannot be neglected. Therefore, there is much interest in the development of simple and quick methods capable of calculating the losses of magnetic components with high accuracy, and thus support the design of magnetic components. However, calculating the iron losses of gapped inductors requires much measurement data or/and complex electromagnetic simulations. This paper proposes a novel iron loss calculation method for gapped inductors, based on the loss-map method. An advantage of the proposed method is that the iron losses of gapped inductors can be calculated accurately without the need for complex simulations and with less measurement effort than the existing approaches. The proposed method is experimentally verified using gapped inductors with both MnZn ferrite and iron dust cores.