Investigation and development of high power inductors for power electronic applications

Abstract

Renewable energy has been the topic of interest and research in recent years, especially so in power electronics, because of the depletion of natural resources. Researchers around the world have been actively searching for possible alternative energy other than the traditional energy sources such as fossil fuels and coals. Possible forms of renewable energy are the wind energy from wind turbines or solar energy from solar panels.

Passive components such as inductors are an important aspect in power converter. This final year project will be focusing on the investigation of different inductor cores and materials for high power output for applications and renewable energy. These different inductor cores will be connected to a IGBT switched dc-dc boost converter for comparison and data collection. For a fair experiment, the boost converter duty cycle and load will be fixed while the only variable component will be these inductors.

These inductor cores are in the shape of toroid, E-core, U-core and laminated core and are coiled to an inductance value of 5mh at a frequency of 10 kHz. The wire coils are able to withstand 20 ampere current rating.

This report also examines two different types of inductor materials, soft ferrite (Manganese-zinc ferrite) and iron-powdered.