EM simulation of planar bus bars in multi-level power converters

This paper presents recent progress in the acceleration of PEEC based electromagnetic simulations and its impact on the design of complex bus bar structures as used in multilevel power converters. The approach presented consists of different dedicated acceleration methods for the different design tasks. The first acceleration technique applied is the so called reluctance matrix method for full 3D field results, reducing memory consumption by orders of magnitude and computing time by a factor 3 to 5. The second acceleration method applied is based on model order reduction techniques for port-to-port impedance extraction, reducing the computation time by about one order of magnitude and allowing wideband macro modeling for system level simulations. The paper focuses on the application of these methods showing the impact on practical bus bar design tasks.