Soft Magnetic Materials Characterization for Power Electronics Applications and Advanced Data Sheets

In power electronics applications where various square and other more complex excitation waveforms are prevalent, manufacturers' data sheets are lacking necessary magnetic characteristic information for detailed and proper magnetic component designs. Therefore, extensive material characterization works on several magnetic materials are independently being performed and organized in an advanced data sheet format for the power electronics community by National Energy Technology Laboratory. These includes core losses and permeability values at many frequencies, duty cycles and induction levels, as well as hysteretic BH loops and anhysteretic BH loop functions. Measurements are performed under a range of excitation conditions relevant for power electronics on full fabricated cores at scale rather than constituent core materials under idealized testing conditions. To date, data sheets of five representative core materials are currently developed and published, which are 3 percent and 6.5 percent silicon-steel, amorphous, nanocomposite, and ferrite magnetic cores. Additional cores are being tested regularly and updates will be provided as new testing results become available.