Systematic Design Approach for Airgap-less Hybrid Integrated Coupled Inductor for Interleaved Paralleled Inverters using Finite Element Analysis

In this paper, a finite element analysis (FEA)-based systematic design approach is proposed for the integrated coupled inductor (CI) with airgap-less hybrid core for interleaved paralleled inverters. Utilizing the proposed hybrid core comprising two different types of magnetic materials without airgap in the integrated CI leads to integration of differential mode (DM) leg inductor to the CI which results in significant increase in power density and efficiency of the interleaved paralleled inverter. Moreover, the fringing effect due to the presence of airgap in CI is eliminated in the proposed airgap-less hybrid CI. The hybrid CI is designed in a way that the required mutual inductance for the CI and the required leakage inductance for the DM inductor can be obtained simultaneously. A three-phase inverter comprising two interleaved paralleled legs connected to the proposed airgap-less hybrid CI in each phase is simulated in Ansys Maxwell, Simplorer, and Icepak FEA platforms. The provided FEA results verify the performance of the proposed airgap-less hybrid CI as well as efficacy of the proposed design approach.