Investigation of toroidal inductors based on non-grain oriented silicon steel : comparative study

Abstract

Inductor or reactor or sometimes called as ‘Choke’ as per its intended situational assignment, is a basic magnetic component which is very useful for many fields and particularly in the fields of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. Amongst its endless applications in the fields, inductors functions in the low frequency range such as the power system frequencies (i.e. 50Hz, 60Hz) are considered mainly in this research. Main concern of this paper is to popularize toroidal steel core inductor construction which is advantages in many aspects over the common other types of inductors such as EI laminated and C-Core constructions. Conventionally for toroidal silicon steel core inductors, cores are constructed with magnetically Grain Oriented Silicon Steel (GOSS). This paper describes a methodological approach to find out the suitability of magnetically Non Grain Oriented Silicon Steel (NGOSS) for the inductor core material. A comparative study is carried out selecting inductor designs made with Grain Oriented Silicon Steel (GOSS) and their corresponding Non grain oriented silicon steel (NGOSS) ones. Comparisons of the designs with regards to their electrical, thermal characteristics are primarily carried out and the economical viability of these inductors with proposed steel type is also verified in this dissertation. Analyzed results shows the advantages of using Non Grain Oriented Silicon Steel (NGOSS) for inductor designs over its cost considerations and at the same time matching performances of the conversional grain oriented types. To have the best optimized outcome from the proposed new steel type for inductor manufacturing, it is necessary to incorporate characteristics of non grain electrical silicon steel to inductor design programs and such program is proposed and developed towards the end of this dissertation.The outage management system was developed using Visual Basic 6 for usage of at the Distribution Control Centre. Then program was installed in the control centre and executed for six months. Then the reported break down was compared with break down history of the feeder and Financial Feasibility Analysis was done. It was observed that the initial investment is paid back within first four years which indicates the implement of the Outage Management system is financially feasible. Also the significant improvement of reliability could be observed.