Magnetic components, such as inductors and transformers, have important effects on the efficiency and performance of switching power supplies; their parasitic properties directly impact the high frequency properties which can cause lot-to-lot variation or unanticipated and non-ideal operation. They are also amongst the most problematic components to design, often requiring numerous design-prototype-test interactions. The electrostatic and electromagnetic analysis of wound components has become more important recently to predict their performance and frequency behavior. Accurate prediction and design of winding parasitic parameters of leakage inductance and winding capacitance for high frequency inductors and transformers in switching power supplies is fundamental to improve performance, lower cost, and speed time to market. This thesis presents a methodology and process to obtain accurate prediction of the inter- and intra-winding capacitances of high frequency magnetic components. Application examples considered are a single-winding choke, a coupled inductor filter, and a multi-winding transformer. Analytical approach for determination of parasitic capacitances in high frequency magnetic components will be covered also. Comparison of the FEA results using JMAG with experimental and empirical formula results show good agreement, supporting the method as a model-based design tool with the potential to significantly reduce the design-prototype-test cycle commonly needed with sophisticated magnetic designs.

Sweep Frequency Response (SFR) measurement on a transformer is a low voltage, offline exercise. So, it virtually permits determination of any network or system function, by imposing any desired terminal condition for the nontested windings and terminals. The terminal conditions employed have significant influence on the achievable fault detection ability, and maximizing this ability should obviously be one of the main aims of frequency response measurements. Simply stated, this requirement translates to the ability to identify/measure as many natural frequencies as possible. However, there is a practical limitation that not all system functions can exhibit all natural frequencies. Hence, it is necessary to determine the most appropriate combination of terminal connection and system function for achieving this objective. The growing popularity of SFR measurements has led to a new IEEE Guide. This document (IEEE Std PC57.149TM/D1) on SFR measurement lists out most of the possible terminal connections and system functions, for both 1φ and 3φ transformers. Surprisingly, it does not identify and recommend any one of them as preferred for maximizing this objective. Initially, considering the high frequency equivalent circuit representation of a 1φ, twowinding transformer, system function for different terminal conditions were computed. Depending on the number of natural frequencies distinguishable in the amplitude frequency response of a system function, each measuring condition was ranked. Thus, it led to identification of the best configuration. Later, these findings were verified on an actual 1φ, two-winding transformer. However, 3φ transformers are quite different in construction compared to 1φ transformers. So, whether the same configuration would also be applicable for SFR measurements on 3φ transformers had to be ascertained. So, the study was next extended to 3φ transformers. Performance of best configuration identified during this investigation are compared with currently employed low-voltage impulse test (used during short-circuit testing of transformers) and currently practiced SFR measurement test conditions, and found to be better. In conclusion, it is believed that after adequate field verifications, the identified configuration can be declared as the preferred way of making SFR measurement on transformers.

This thesis proposes innovative methods to extract information embedded in the frequency and time domain response of the transformer winding, and utilizes them to suggest solutions to a few tasks that have until now been thought difficult, if not impossible, to resolve. Pursuing this philosophy originated from the basic under- standing that the response of any physical system (behaving largely as a linear time invariant system) has embedded information that characterizes it completely. So, the prerequisite is to evolve ways to extract this information from measured responses. Once that is done, a variety of interesting applications can be envisaged. The two applications considered in this thesis are- •Investigate indirect measurement of the series capacitance of a transformer winding using the measured frequency or time domain response •Explore the possibility of increasing the physical resolution of the ladder network used to model a fully interleaved-disk winding In the former application, since direct measurement of series capacitance is impossible, alternatives based on indirect measurement were also not attempted. Similarly, in the latter application, the upper limit is known to be fixed by the number of distinctly observable peaks in the magnitude frequency response, so the question of increasing this limit was also never explored. Solutions to these tasks are proposed after a systematic analysis of frequency/time domain responses of a winding, initially modeled as a lumped parameter ladder network, to extract correlations that exist between them and winding parameters, and finally examine how these relations can be exploited together with the measured responses. Each of the five chapters is dedicated to describe the solution to one task. In each chapter, analytical formulation is presented first, followed by experimental results. Good agreement with the predicted results demonstrates its practicability. In final summary, indirect measurement of the series capacitance of a winding and en- hancing physical resolution of a ladder network model to represent a fully interleaved- disk winding was successfully demonstrated and they are the main contributions of this thesis.