Multi-Secondary Transformer: A Modeling Technique for Simulation - II

Power Transformers with more than one secondary winding are not uncommon in industrial applications. But new classes of applications where very large number of independent secondaries are used are becoming popular in controlled converters for medium and high voltage applications. Cascade H-bridge medium voltage drives and Pulse Step Modulation (PSM) based high voltage power supplies are such applications. Regulated high voltage power supplies (Fig. 1) with 35-100 kV, 5-10 MW output range with very fast dynamics (${\mu}S$ order) uses such transformers. Such power supplies are widely used in fusion research. Here series connection of isolated voltage sources with conventional switching semiconductor devices is achieved by large number of separate transformers or by single unit of multi-secondary transformer. Naturally, a transformer having numbers of secondary windings (~40) on single core is the preferred solution due to space and cost considerations. For design and simulation analysis of such a power supply, the model of a multi-secondary transformer poses special problem to any circuit analysis software as many simulation softwares provide transformer models with limited number (3-6) of secondary windings. Multi-Secondary transformer models with 3 different schemes are available. A comparison of test results from a practical Multi-secondary transformer with a simulation model using magnetic component is found to describe the behavior closer to observed test results. Earlier models assumed magnetising inductance in a linear loss less core model although in actual it is saturable core made-up of CRGO steel laminations. This article discusses a more detailed representation of flux coupled magnetic model with saturable core properties to simulate actual transformers very close to its observed parameters in test and actual usage.