Prediction of Core Loss and Temperature in Gapped Core Shunt Reactors Using Reluctance Network

Shunt reactors are employed to compensate the reactor power generation and resulting voltage rise issues by virtue of large capacitive currents in long transmission lines. Distributed gapped core construction is extensively used for shunt reactors in which the magnetic core is divided into several laminated packets separated by fragments made of non-magnetic material. Presence of significant volume of air gaps in magnetic flux path generates superfluous losses in the reactor core. Three dimensional FEM calculations are widely used numerical methods for accurate prediction of loss components in the reactor, but it necessitates high computational resources like sophisticated workstations and skilled specialists. This paper aims to predict the core losses and temperature in a gapped core shunt reactor using a simple and fast reluctance network based analytical method and it is verified for two extreme ratings of 1Φ, 3 limb reactors. The reliability of the results are validated by comparison with FEM simulations.