Design and Development of a Planar Flyback Transformer for Isolated Power Supply Applications

The conventional wire wound magnetic components have exposed several limitations in terms of high power density, high operating frequency, and low profile in DC-DC power converters. The planar magnetic has eliminated the limitations of conventional transformers. Planar transformers are perfect for limited space applications since they are often smaller and flatter than wire-wound transformers where wire wound transformers are bulky. This project involved a reduction in height of 50% from a conventional wire-wound transformer while achieving comparable electrical performance. In low-power DC-DC converter applications, flyback topology is often used as it is simple in structure and provides better isolation. In this project, a 2.5W flyback converter is designed with a planar transformer. The design of the planar transformer was accomplished by using Ansys PEmag. According to the PEmag simulation design, the PCB was designed in Altium Designer. Then, it was exported to a finite element analysis-based software, Ansys Maxwell 3D, for further analysis including leakage inductance & coupling coefficient. A multi-physics circuit simulator, Ansys Simplorer, was also introduced in this project to observe the overall performance of the flyback converter with the designed planar transformer.