Design of High Performance Shaped Profile Windings for Additive Manufacture

Current carrying windings are a fundamental feature of electrical machines, inductors and transformers, and are typically the dominant source of losses, arising from DC Joule and AC skin and proximity effect loss mechanisms. The minimum physical volume occupied by a winding is ultimately limited by the ability to dissipate these internally generated losses, manifesting as heat, and in turn by the temperature rating of the electrical insulation system or Permanent Magnets (PMs), if present. Hence, a combination of loss reduction and improved heat extraction can yield system level performance improvement. This paper investigates the use of metal additive manufacturing to form electrical windings in place of conventional methods affording unparalleled freedom in the conductor geometry and the potential to incorporate complementary features such as endwinding cooling. Two conductor shaping algorithms capable of exploiting such geometric freedom are developed and applied to the design of an 80 μH, 200 A
_RMS
, 400 Hz E-core line filter inductor. The resulting performance of each winding and design for additive manufacture considerations are discussed.