Magnetic characteristics of sandwich-transformer cores built with Si-Fe and amorphous materials

A stacked core of dimensions 26×23×0.4 cm³ has been built from an amorphous magnetic material (in the as-produced state) using butt and lap joints. The magnitude and direction of fundamental and third-harmonic components of in-plane and normal flux density have been measured and compared with those obtained from a grain-oriented Si-Fe stacked core of the same dimensions. Building factors of five different cores built with various combinations of the two materials using the sandwich technique have also been determined. It is shown that the amorphous material has lower anisotropy than the grain-oriented Si-Fe material, and the normal flux is larger in the amorphous material core than in the grain-oriented Si-Fe material core. It has also been found, in general, that the building factor increases as the proportion of grain-oriented Si-Fe in a core is made larger