Experimental verification on thermal modeling of medium frequency transformers

Nowadays, medium frequency transformers have gained growing attention in modern power system. Higher power density, which is realized by increasing the operating frequency, leads to the reduction of the magnetic components size. Along with it, cooling surface is consequently reduced which results in high thermal stress. Careful attention must be paid on the loss mechanisms and thermal analysis of a medium frequency transformer at the design stage. This paper develops an equivalent thermal circuit of an oil-immersed medium frequency transformer to predict its temperature profile. Thermal resistance, capacitance and the losses generated in the core and winding are carefully estimated. Two oil-immersed shell-type transformer prototypes with specifications as 5kW, 500/5000V, 5kHz, interleaved winding construction have been developed and built for verification purpose. Loss and temperature measurements have been performed to verify the presented framework. The accuracy of the proposed thermal model is benchmarked and corroborated through experimental measurements as well as FEM-CFD study with good agreement.