No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

In order to design a power transformer it is important to understand its internal electromagnetic behaviour. That can be obtained by measurements on physical transformers, analytical expressions and computer simulations. One benefit with simulations is that the transformer can be studied before it is built physically and that the consequences of changing dimensions and parameters easily can be tested. In this thesis a time-domain transformer model is presented. The model includes core losses as magnetic static hysteresis, eddy current and excess eddy current losses. Moreover, the model comprises winding losses including eddy currents, capacitive effects and leakage flux. The core and windings are first modelled separately and then connected together in a total transformer model. This results in a detailed transformer model. One important result of the thesis is the possibility to simulate dynamic hysteresis including the eddy current shielding in the magnetic core material. This is achieved by using Cauer circuit combined with analytical expression for static and dynamic hysteresis. Thereby, all magnetic loss components in the material can be simulated accurately. This dynamic hysteresis model is verified through experiments showing very good agreement. / QC 20101116

A power supply is an essential part of all electronic devices. A switching mode power supply is a light weight power solution for most modern electronic equipment. The high frequency transformer is the backbone of modern switched mode power supplies. The skin effect and proximity effects are major problems in high frequency transformer design, because of induced eddy currents. These effects can result in transformers being destroyed and losing their power transferring function at high frequencies. Therefore, eddy currents are unwanted currents in high frequency transformers. Leakage inductance and the unbalanced magnetic flux distribution are two further obstacles for the development of high frequency transformers. Winding structures of power transformers are also a critical part of transformer design and manufacture, especially for high frequency applications. A new planar transformer with a helical winding structure has been designed and can maintain the advantages of existing planar transformers and significantly reduce the eddy currents in the windings. The maximum eddy current density can be reduced to 27% of the density of the planar transformer with meander type winding structure and 33% of the density of the transformer with circular spiral winding structure at an operating frequency of 1MHz. The voltage ratio of the transformer with helical winding structure is effectively improved to 150% of the voltage ratio of the planar transformer with circular spiral coils. With the evenly distributed magnetic flux around the winding, the planar transformer with helical winding structure is excellent for high frequency switching mode power supplies in the 21st Century.

This dissertation investigates a new design for a magnetostrictive actuator that employs individually controlled coils distributed axially along the magnetostrictive rod. As a quantitative goal, the objective is to show that the multi-coil actuator can operate effectively at frequencies as high as 10,000 Hz with 900 N force and 50 microns of displacement. Conventional, single coil actuators with the same parameters for force and displacement develop significant attenuation in their response at frequencies above the first longitudinal vibration resonance at about 2750 Hz. The goal of the research is to investigate whether multiple coils can effectively increase the frequency range a least four times the range of conventional magnetostrictive actuators. This document derives a new mathematical model of the actuator that represents the spatial distributions of magnetic field and vibration, devises a control design that takes advantage of the multiple inputs to control the displacement of the actuator while consuming minimum electrical power, and describes a prototype multi-coil actuator and experimental system developed to test the idea. The simulations of the multi-coil actuator and control design demonstrate successful transient operation of the actuator over the targeted frequency range with feasible levels of input power and current. Experimental tests of the design, although limited by a computer sampling rate less than 10,000 Hz, are able to validate the predictions of the developed model of the actuator and reproduce the simulated control performance within the constraints of the experimental system.

Dans le cadre de la lutte contre l'augmentation des gaz à effet de serre et la préservation de l'environnement, l'efficacité énergétique est un enjeu majeur du XXIème siècle. Par exemple, les moteurs et actionneurs électriques sont de plus en plus nombreux dans le monde, les transformateurs de distribution affichent une efficacité énergétique de 97 à 99 %. Cependant, en raison de leur utilisation intensive, leur impact environnemental est loin d'être négligeable. De ce fait une compréhension et une détermination plus précise des pertes dans ces machines électriques permettraient d'améliorer l'efficacité énergétique des dispositifs d'électronique de puissance et des machines électriques. Ces dispositifs sont le siège de pertes dans les bobinages et dans les circuits magnétiques. L'objectif de cette thèse est de pouvoir modéliser, par des méthodes numériques de type éléments finis, les pertes dans les circuits magnétiques feuilletés des machines électriques.Cependant le laminage de ces circuits magnétiques, qui permet de réduire les courants de Foucault, induit de fortes contraintes de modélisation. En effet la nécessité de disposer d'au moins deux éléments finis dans l'épaisseur de peau pour obtenir une solution de qualité, conduit à la réalisation de maillages de taille très importante, incompatible avec les moyens de calcul disponibles aujourd'hui.L'objectif de ce travail est de développer des modèles de lois de comportement homogénéisé des matériaux magnétiques feuilletés dans le cadre de l'utilisation de la méthode des éléments finis en 2D et 3D, avec application aux machines tournantes et aux transformateurs. Ces modèles à priori permettront de prendre en compte les pertes en cours de résolution, afin d'obtenir des résultats précis sur les grandeurs locales et globales, et notamment les pertes, en fonction du temps. / Energy efficiency becomes a global major issue of XXIst century as we are dealing with greenhouse emissions. For instance electric rotating machines and actuators are globally more used than before. Distribution transformers do have 97 to 99% efficiency rate, with a non negligible environmental impact due to their intensive use. A thorough understanding and modeling of losses in those electric devices could help improving and maintaining that level of environmental impact and energy efficiency. This could be productive to many electrical devices from power electronics devices to electric machines and networks, because of losses in windings and magnetic cores. The main aim of this study is to model eddy current losses in laminated magnetic cores of electric machines by means of numerical methods such as Finite Element Methods (FEM).Laminating magnetic cores besides reducing eddy current loops, induces new modeling constraints . The necessary assignment of at least two elements in the skin depth in order to have good quality solutions, leads sometimes to unsolvable problems using actual computation solutions.The purpose will be to develop source code of homogenized behavior laws of laminated magnetic cores using 2D and 3D finite element methods, applied to transformers and electrical motors. Those a priori models consider losses in the main solving process allowing to have accurate results on local and macroscopic entities varying temporally.

Eddy current (EC) based testing and measurement methods are well known in non-destructive testing (NDT) world. EC sensors are extensively studied and used for material health monitoring and its property measurement. Target displacement measurement is one of the well-known applications of EC method. The main advantage of EC sensor is its working capability in harsh environment like humidity, contamination etc. It is non-contact, rugged and requires less maintenance. The range and sensitivity of target displacement is mainly determined by the probe geometry and its construction method. Also displacement measurement depends upon geometry and electromagnetic (EM) properties of the target plate. Any variation of ambient temperature alters the EM properties of the probe as well as EM properties of the target. Thus, many parameters like geometry, EM properties and temperature involved in target displacement measurement. Hence, while using EC sensor for displacement measurement, it demands careful design and measurement procedure to achieve high sensitivity and high precision with low temperature drift. To achieve these, we present the following. 1) A temperature compensation technique 2) Optimization of probe geometry and its construction method to increase the range and sensitivity 3) Selection of suitable probe measurement parameter (Z, R, X) based on target material properties 4) Making the displacement measurement less sensitive to tolerance in probe construction parameter. A temperature compensation technique for target displacement measurement, using a self-running LC oscillator has been presented. A sensing coil is energized by a Hartley oscillator. The oscillator voltage is maintained at a constant level by a closed loop feedback circuit and the average feedback current to the oscillator is measured for target displacement detection. The temperature drift of the feedback current is compensated by applying temperature compensation function (TCF) and this is verified experimentally. Cold rolled mild steel (carbon steel) is taken as a target material and the sensor is tested over a temperature range of 20 °C – 80 °C. It shows that the temperature drift is less than ±30 ppm/°C over 3 mm target displacement. To match all the sensor modules in mass production, components selection procedure is presented. To avoid mismatch across sensors in manufacturing process, the transistor based oscillator is modified with operational trans-conductance amplifier (OTA). The same temperature compensation formula (TCF) is applied to compensate the temperature drift of feedback current and achieved intended accuracy. Geometry and construction parameters of the eddy current sensing probe is optimized for target displacement measurement using Ansoft Maxwell, electromagnetic design software. EC probe with different geometry are analyzed in search of suitable geometry for target displacement measurement. Four shapes of commercially available core have been chosen for probe construction. For each shape of sensing probe, the radius and height of the probe is increased by 0 mm to 9 mm to find the effect of them on sensitivity and range of target displacement measurement. It has been observed that the probe with less height and maximum diameter has shown better performance. In addition to that, the probe geometry is optimized to achieve more sensitivity and range within the space available for probe mounting. It helps to utilize the available space effectively for probe design. Coil winding and mount-ing it inside the core window also important parameter in probe design. It has been observed that de-pressing the sensing coil inside the core window from sensing face by 3 mm decreases the sensitivity by 40 %. Hence, it is recommended to place the coil on the extreme end of the sensing face of the core. To know the effect of core permeability, it is varied from 1000 to 15000. It has been observed that it has no effect on sensitivity and measurement range. Only optimizing the probe geometry and its construction method is not adequate for target displacement measurement. We know that the EC based displacement measurement is also target material dependent. Generally probe impedance is measured and then the temperature drift of the sensing coil resistance is compensated to know the target displacement. Most of the temperature compensation techniques use this compensation technique and it is shown that those are suitable for high conductivity targets like copper. Choosing Z for displacement measurement may not be only best choice for all target materials. The displacement can be measured also through either R or X of the probe. Choosing the proper probe parameter for a given target material will provide a less temperature drift for target displacement measurement. To know about this, a simulation has been made for target displacement measurement with target metal of μr = 1, relative permittivity εr =1, and temperature coefficient of resistivity ∝ = 0.004 K-1. The conductivity (σ) of the target is varied from 1×106 S/m to 62×106 S/m in the temperature range of 20 ℃ – 80 ℃. Now the simulation has been repeated by fixing  as a constant and varying target μr. The metal plate with  = 1×106 S/m, εr=1 and ∝ = 0.004 K – 1 is taken as a target and μr is varied from 100 to 10000. For both conductivity and permeability sweep analysis, the target displacement is measured as a function of Z, R and X independently. The temperature drift in displacement measurement is also analysed for the above temperature range. An experiment has been conducted with copper, stainless steel and mild steel as target metal in the temperature range of 20 ℃ – 80 ℃. The temperature drift is calculated when the displacement is measured as function of Z, R and X. Based on the results, we have identified that the target material relative permeability determines the selection of probe measurement parameter for target displacement measurement. Hence, knowing tar-get r alone suffice to select the probe measurement parameter (Z or R or X) for displacement measurement. Optimizing the probe geometry, selecting the proper probe measurement parameter and temperature compensation technique suffice to provide a good sensitivity, range and low temperature drift for a single probe. But in general, one of the mass produced probes is selected as a reference probe and it is calibrated against the ambient temperature and target displacement. And the calibration curves are loaded to all the probes. Matching the probe construction parameters to each other across the production patches is not possible in mass production. This makes the temperature compensation function and displacement calibration are different for every individual probes for displacement measurement. This degrades the measurement accuracy. A simulation has been performed with pot core with commercial tolerance. Using this, we have obtained 24 probes due to variations in 1) Individual and few combinational variations in core and coil dimensions 2) Core permeability variation and 3) relative position of the coil with respect to core. Finally, we have quantified the displacement error for each probe. We have identified the important probe dimensional parameters that have to be controlled precisely in mass production to improve the measurement accuracy. It shows error of 0.86 % in the displacement measurement when the relative reactance and relative displacement is used for measurement. In practice, error in displacement measurement due to both the ambient temperature drift and the tolerance in probe construction parameter exist simultaneously. Hence, the combined error is computed for the target displacement range of 0 mm – 3 mm for the temperature range of 0 °C – 100 °C. The total error of less than 1 % is achieved for commercial standard probe tolerance. Finally, we have provided general factory production procedure and user calibration procedure of probe design to achieve cost effective displacement measurement with sensitivity and range with low temperature drift.

This work deals with the usage of magneto-rheological (MR) damper in the semi-active car suspension. Semi-active suspension can improve ride comfort or tyre grip to the level, which cannot be achieved with the common passive setting of the damper. MR damper has however features, like time response of the controller with MR damper and the control range of the MR damper, which limit area of application. It was found out that especially the time response of the damper significantly influences the efficiency of semi-active algorithms. Current MR dampers with controllers are not capable of efficient control of the semi-active suspension. For proper design of semi-active suspension with MR dampers, the time response must be decreased. Therefore, a new PWM current controller was designed and verified. Also changes in MR damper design which eliminate eddy-currents in the magnetic circuit were proposed. The results of this work should contribute to the better design of semi-active suspension systems with MR damper.

A contact system driven by a high energetic Thomson actuator requires to be decelerated from full speed down to zero. The forces originated from the interaction between a stationary copper tube and a moving array of magnets combined with plastic or ferromagnetic material are used to generate eddy-current damping. Five different configurations of small but strong (N52) neodymium magnets and spacers were benchmarked for simple free-fall damping. A comparison between experimental results and simulations (using COMSOL) has shown that the most effective damping is reached by two consecutive permanent magnets with opposite magnetization directions ,separated by low-carbon content steel concentrators(SN - Fe concentrator- NS). The proposed damper design is the result of the balance between various parameters such as magnet orientation topology in the array, spacer material and its dimensions, copper tube thickness and the air gap between copper tube and array. Furthermore, the design was scaled up and an actuator-drive system was added to perform more realistic tests, which demonstrated the damping effectiveness on a fast moving armature actuated by a Thomson coil energized by a capacitor bank. All models in the simulation predicted the damping effect in advance. Investigations were conducted with two cases: (1) A solid copper rod was supposed to pass through the magnet array; (2) A plastic shaft was applied to support the magnet array. Finally a damping prototype with a plastic shaft was built for completing damping tests. The results of these tests validated the numerical model with a high degree of accuracy.