Performance Analysis of Planar Transformer for DC-DC Converter with Ansys Maxwell

Recent developments in the field of power electronics are majorly focusing on innovating power converters with high power density and high operating frequency. These developments have revealed number of drawbacks in the use of conventional wire-wound machines especially transformers. Planar transformer provides many enhanced features compared to conventional transformer such as high efficiency and compact size. Therefore, planar transformers (PT) are ideally suited in electric vehicle application such as battery management systems and military systems. But designing planar transformers within desired size limit with accurate analysis has always been a challenge. Hence a new methodology is required. Ansys Maxwell (Maxwell 2D and 3D) have shown their unmatchable ability of electromagnetic analysis with good accuracy in planar transformer design. Hence, this paper aims at FEM based simulation of planar transformer for DC-DC Forward Converter in Ansys Maxwell. Here, initially 2D Model of Planar transformer is designed in Ansys PExprt. This model is imported in Ansys Maxwell and its performance is analyzed. While designing planar transformer, the most important factors for planar transformer (PT) design which includes winding loss, core loss, leakage inductance has been individually studied. And overall efficiency of planar transformer is 98.82 %. Issues arising and typical phenomena encountered are also discussed in detail.