Interactive winding geometry design of power transformers

Winding geometry design is an important part of power transformer electrical design. Conventionally, the winding geometry is designed manually, which is a time consuming job because it involves many iteration steps in order to meet all cost, manufacturing and electrical requirements. In this paper a method is presented which automatically generates the winding geometry for given user parameters and allows the user to interactively set and change parameters. To achieve this goal, the winding geometry design problem is transferred to a mixed integer nonlinear optimization problem. The relevant geometry design parameters are defined as optimization variables. The cost and other requirements are modeled as constraints. In order to get an optimal solution, a stochastic ant colony optimization algorithm is applied. It is well-known, that an optimizer can get stuck in a local minimum. For this specific problem, we adopt efficient strategies to come out of local minima, furthermore a reduced variable search range helps to accelerate the optimization process. Test results show that a valid design is delivered within seconds such that the user can interactively change the variable search area and constraints to improve the design.