Development of an FEM based approach for Estimation of Leakage Reactance in Multi-Winding Rectifier Transformers and Experimental Verification

Abstract

This paper presents the development of a Finite Element Method (FEM) based approach for estimation of leakage reactance in a rectifier transformer. The winding design features of rectifier transformer demands the inclusion of multiple windings and the 18 pulse rectifier transformer consists of three high voltage windings and three low voltage windings. The estimation of leakage reactance prior to the manufacture of multi-winding transformers is a challenging task in the transformer industry. This work attempts to develop a Finite Element Method (FEM) based model for calculation of leakage reactance of rectifier transformer in ANSYS software. The simulation of the model with different excitation conditions are done, the total energy is obtained and is used to obtain the leakage reactance of transformer for each case. The experimental measurement of leakage reactance of transformer for different excitation conditions is done and the results show a good agreement with the simulation results for each case. Thus the proposed FEM based scheme for estimation of leakage reactance in rectifier transformers is reliable for estimation of leakage reactance of new design of rectifier transformers.