An Investigation of Ferrite and Nanocrystalline Core Materials for Medium-Frequency Power Transformers

In this study, two transformers are designed using the ferrite N87 and the nanocrystalline core materials for the same power level and operating frequency. The operating frequency is defined as 10 kHz, which is suitable for both materials. Modeling and simulation studies have been performed with the same finite element analysis software and the obtained results have been reported. The nanocrystalline and the ferrite N87 core materials have been compared according to both electrical and mechanical parameters. In these comparisons, many features such as core and winding losses, flux distributions, leakage flux, efficiency, and both electrical and mechanical performance have been reported comparatively in the case of rectangular waveform excitation of the transformer. Obtained results show that the weight and the volume of the transformer are reduced and more compact transformer is designed by using the nanocrystalline core material. In addition, besides the core loss, winding losses are also reduced in this design.