Modeling and Simulation of Foil Windings

Master thesis, HiWi Position, Projectseminar, Bachelor thesis

In many applications, foil windings are preferred over wire windings or Litz-wire windings because of their better thermal properties, higher fill factor, lower resistance and easier construction. Foil windings are used in inductors, magnet systems and transformers. Contemporary developments are focusing on increasing frequencies, lower weight and production cost and shorter time-to-market. Further research on foil windings is driven by applications such as, e.g., foil-winding transformers for DC-DC converters and foil windings used in filters or for wireless power transfer.

The skin effect which becomes increasingly important at higher frequencies, is counteracted by using thinner foils. For a skin depth below the foil’s thickness, the skin effect is assumed to be only relevant at the foil tips. There, however, high current densities may lead to hot spots, even when the tips are well cooled. Additionally, fringing flux impinging perpendicularly on the foils causes eddy currents, possibly leading to unacceptably high local losses.