Design Guidelines for High-Power and High-Frequency Transformers

In power electronics, the tendency to increase power and frequency (in the range of several MHz) has become an actual concern and leads to challenging design of the magnetic components. The traditional design methods need to be adapted to this demand, since high frequency effects in the core behavior need to be considered, and parasitic elements play a key role. In this paper, a new design method for high-power and high-frequency transformers is proposed. FEA tools and semi-empirical approaches are used to achieve an accurate estimation of losses, parasitic capacitance and temperature. A class-D Push-Pull 13.56 MHz, 2 kW transformer for space applications is built as an example to validate the method.