Calculation of Saturation in Magnetic Cores using the Boundary Element Method

摘要

This paper presents an algorithm to simulate the current dependent inductance of a power inductor with the boundary element method. The non-linear problem is decomposed into linear subproblems in such a way, that the whole operating range up to a certain current is calculated without additional iterations due to convergence processes. The linear subproblems have the same geometry but different material properties. Their commonalities can be effectively exploited to reduce the computational cost by the use of the boundary element method. The algorithm is tested on the geometry of a stepped air-gap inductor and the results are compared to simulations with COMSOL Multiphysics^®.