Comprehensive analysis of inductors for an interleaved buck converter

Interleaved DC-DC buck converters are used in medium to high power applications with their advantages such as low electromagnetic interference and output voltage ripples. Although, discrete core inductors can be used, coupled inductors which use the same magnetic core can be used to obtain optimum design such as volume, cost and efficiency in interleaved converters. Also, in coupled inductor applications, duty ratio, saturation effect and interactions of the windings should be analyzed carefully. In this study, selection of core structure with different types of coupled inductors is investigated for whole operation range. Simulations are performed with co-simulations of Ansoft-Maxwel 3D and Simplorer software. Inductors that are designed in Maxwell by using Kool Mu E cores are used with buck converter, which was modeled in Simplorer. Results obtained from simulation studies are reported and compared with each other.