Iron loss comparison between reactor with air gap and material

Laminated cores are widely used in many electrical applications such as transformers, reactors or electrical machines . They are responsible for iron losses, which depend mainly on the magnetic material itself, the core shape and the working conditions such as frequency and magnetic flux density . Materials with better magnetic properties than those of conventional electrical steel have been investigated . Grain-oriented (GO) steel is an anisotropic magnetic material that has been used to improve electrical machines [1] and reactors efficiency [2] . Amorphous materials offer good magnetic properties but have high brittleness and are difficult to manufacture . However, they have been used to reduce iron losses in transformers [3] and electrical motors [4] . Moreover, Gao et al. have shown the importance of the core shape for the loss reduction of a reactor [5] and Tera et al. investigated the influence of the air gap on the iron losses of an inductor [6] . In this paper, three different materials, namely grain-oriented material (GO230), high performance non-oriented Fe-Si metal (super E ST125) and nanocrystalline soft magnetic material (FINEMET FT-3M), are investigated for the loss reduction of a reactor . It is shown that the material has little influence on the total reactor iron losses.