This invention relates to a multi-toroid transformer.
Referring to
As power and/or operating requirements are increased a voltage Vloop on the single turn 13 can become sufficiently high that the primary core set 11 numbered 1 to Npc can be dispensed with if Vloop is a suitable voltage to connect directly to a power supply circuit output.
At a lower voltage it may also be possible to eliminate the set of primary closed magnetic circuits by making the loop more than a single turn. There is in fact no limit, in theory, to a number of turns that could be wound on the secondary core set so that the loop turns themselves match a required power supply voltage.
JP 11 176678 discloses a high voltage transformer comprising a plurality of modules connected in series each module comprising a transformer structure and a voltage amplification and rectifier circuit. The transformers of the modules are driven by a single turn primary winding which is apparently connected directly to a power supply.
GB 427,948 discloses a transformer with concentric single first and second windings on respective magnetic cores enclosed in a casing with a central post extending coaxially through the magnetic cores of the first and second windings such that the post and casing act as a secondary winding for the first winding and as a primary winding for the second winding, i.e. the post and casing form a common coupling winding.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,023,768 discloses a cylindrical tank with an axial hollow core such that secondary windings can be accommodated in the tank coaxial with the tank core. In one embodiment, multiple turns of insulated wire pass through the core and around an outer wall and end faces of the tank to form a primary winding. Alternatively, a single turn primary winding is formed from metal layers on the tank core, tank ends and outer walls.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,377,153 discloses a transformer for use in insulated switching power supply apparatus with a reduction of switching noise, in which cores are electrically connected by an electrically conductive housing which operates as a single-turn winding.
According to a first aspect of the present invention there is provided a transformer comprising secondary winding means including a plurality of coaxially arranged toroidal closed magnetic circuit means connected in series within an enclosure means and primary winding means comprising a plurality of turns including electrically conducting members passing axially through the toroidal closed magnetic circuit means, respective ones of the plurality of the electrically conducting members being connected by respective electrically conducting strip line means passing along walls of the enclosure means to form a continuous electrical conductor as the primary winding means.
Conveniently, the electrically conducting members are mutually spaced apart such that cross-sections of the conducting members lie substantially on a circumference of a circle on a transverse cross-section of the enclosure means.
Advantageously, the electrically conducting members are at least one of tubes, rods and strip conductors.
Conveniently, the electrically conducting members are tubes with a wall thickness comparable to a skin depth of the electric current carried thereby at an operating frequency of the transformer.
Optionally, the electrically conducting members are flat strip conductors of thickness comparable to a skin depth of the electric current carried thereby at an operating frequency of the transformer.
Optionally, the electrically conducting members comprise a combination of electrically conducting members connected in parallel, each conducting member with a wall thickness comparable to a skin depth of the electric current carried thereby at an operating frequency of the transformer.
Conveniently, the electrically conducting strip line means are formed in printed circuit boards located on outer faces of walls of the enclosure means.
Conveniently, the enclosure has a substantially rectilinear transverse cross-section and the walls of the enclosure parallel to a longitudinal axis of the enclosure are substantially planar.
Conveniently, the electrically conducting strip line means are located on first, second and third walls of the substantially planar walls and have a thickness greater than a skin depth at an operating frequency of the transformer.
Advantageously, a fourth substantially planar wall comprises a printed circuit board for rectifying components.
Conveniently, the transformer further comprises insulating tube means on which the secondary toroidal closed magnetic circuit means are located and arranged to provide voltage hold off for the electrically conducting members passing axially through the toroidal closed magnetic circuits.
Conveniently, the transformer further comprises coolant distribution means.
Advantageously, the coolant distribution means comprises tube means, coaxial with, and of a smaller diameter than core apertures of the toroidal closed magnetic circuit means, the tube means being supplied with bleed hole apertures to direct the coolant towards respective secondary toroids.
Conveniently, the transformer further comprises electrostatic screen means between the primary winding means and secondary winding means.
Advantageously, the electrostatic screen means is provided by a thin-walled metallic sleeve located between the primary winding means and the secondary winding means.
Advantageously, the thin-walled metallic sleeve comprises a longitudinal slit to minimise eddy currents in the thin-walled metallic sleeve.
Conveniently, the transformer further comprises electrically insulating sheet means located between the toroidal closed magnetic circuit means and inner walls of the enclosure to provide high voltage insulation and minimize a risk of a high voltage tracking across a surface of the insulator.
Conveniently, the individual secondary toroidal closed magnetic circuit means are interconnected such that each secondary toroidal closed magnetic circuit means of the transformer is star connected and provides an input to a two pulse rectifier.
According to a second aspect of the invention, there is provided a three-phase inverter system, comprising three individual and isolated transformers as described above, wherein the primary winding means of the transformers are delta connected and arranged to be fed from a three-phase inverter.
Advantageously, the secondary toroidal closed magnetic circuit means of the three individual and isolated transformers are interconnected such that each secondary toroidal closed magnetic circuit means of a transformer is star connected and provides an input to a six pulse rectifier.
The invention will now be described, by way of example, with reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
a is a circuit diagram of a first prior art transformer;
b is a schematic drawing of a second prior art transformer;
a is an end view of the embodiment of
b is an end view of a third embodiment of the invention;
In the Figures like reference numerals denote like parts. It will be understood that in the interests of clarity the drawings are not necessarily to scale.
All the secondary magnetic circuits are electromagnetically coupled to a low resistance loop 23 having two turns passing through the secondary closed magnetic circuits but otherwise comprising a single loop. Thus the primary effectively has two turns but any reasonable number np of turns could be used.
Each of the Nsc secondary windings 21 is provided with a respective rectifier 24, so that an output of the transformer 20 may be rectified to provide a DC output Eout.
The section of the primary turning through the secondary magnetic circuits may be located within tubing 25 to provide electrostatic screening between the primary winding 23 and secondary windings 21.
The transformer 20 has the following relationships between the primary and secondary voltages, as illustrated in
where
Vpri is the primary voltage across the primary winding 23
Edc is the rectified secondary voltage across one secondary winding 21
np is number of primary turns
Nsc is the number of secondary magnetic circuits or cores
nsc is the number of secondary turns per magnetic circuit or core
Eout is the output voltage of the transformer
A practical system might require twenty secondary cores each with an internal diameter of around 100 mm and height of 25 mm, which would require a structure 500 mm long. Winding only six turns through such an assembly would be a difficult and tedious task. Furthermore, controlling a wire that may require a sufficient cross-section to handle high frequency current of up to 150 A while being positioned carefully for voltage hold off of up to 25 kV would be difficult.
This invention provides a practical construction arrangement that overcomes the difficulties associated with solving this problem.
With high frequency currents only a surface of a conductor is fully utilised for current flow. Skin depth, that is a depth where a current is reduced to only 37% of a surface value, is used to describe this well-known effect. For copper, one of the best practical electrical conductors, skin depth is approximately given by the equation:
Thus for say 5000 Hz the skin depth is only 0.09 cm. Thus high current conductors require a large area even at quite “low” high frequencies.
Known Litz wire has many strands of thin conductors insulated from each other bunched and wound in a manner which can assist in such applications. However Litz wire is expensive, complex, and difficult to make connections to.
Two more practical but effective materials are flat strip conductors of thickness comparable to, but slightly greater than, the skin depth and tubes with a wall thickness comparable to, but slightly greater than, the skin depth. Optionally, the conducting members comprise a combination of tubes connected in parallel with a wall thickness comparable to, but slightly greater than, a skin depth of the electric current carried thereby at an operating frequency of the transformer.
All thin wires, whether Litz or conventional, tend to lack rigidity and fall or sag under the effect of gravity or move under the effect of other forces. Thus precise location of such electrical conductors to control their position for high voltage insulation can be a problem.
In the present invention multi-turn primary wiring is realised by a mechanical arrangement using relatively rigid strips and tubes. A feature is the use of standard established low cost material forms.
Referring to
Referring to
Thus, tubes or rods and strip lines on sides of a trough-like structure 47 containing coaxial secondary closed magnetic circuits 42 are connected in series to form the primary winding.
An input strip line 330 on a first end cheek 33 connects a primary input terminal to a first end of a first tube or rod 301, only the ends of which are shown in the interests of greater clarity of the drawing.
A second end of the first rod or tube 301 is connected by a first cheek strip line 311 on the second end cheek 31 to a first end of a first strip line 321 on an outer face of a first side 471 of the trough-like structure 47 shown in
A second end of the second rod or tube 302 is connected by a second cheek strip line 312 on the second end cheek 31 to a first end of a second strip line 322 on the outer face of the first side 471 of the trough-like structure 47. A second end of the second strip line 322 is connected by a second cheek strip line 332 on the first cheek 33 to a first end of a third rod or tube 303.
A second end of the third rod or tube 303 is connected by a third cheek strip line 313 on the second end cheek 31 to a first end of a third strip line 323 on an outer face of a second side 472, orthogonal to the first side 471, of the trough-like structure 47. A second end of the third strip line 323 is connected by a third cheek strip line 333 on the first cheek 33 to a first end of a fourth rod or tube 304.
A second end of the fourth rod or tube 304 is connected by a fourth cheek strip line 314 on the second end cheek 31 to a first end of a fourth strip line 324 on the outer face of the second side 472 of the trough-like structure 47. A second end of the fourth strip line 324 is connected by a fourth cheek strip line 334 on the first cheek 33 to a first end of a fifth rod or tube 305.
A second end of the fifth rod or tube 305 is connected by a fifth cheek strip line 315 on the second end cheek 31 to a first end of a fifth strip line 325 on an outer face of a third side 473, orthogonal to the second side 472 and parallel to the first side 471 of the trough-like structure 47. A second end of the fifth strip line 325 is connected by a fifth cheek strip line 335 on the first cheek 33 to a first end of a sixth rod or tube 306.
A second end of the sixth rod or tube 306 is connected by a sixth cheek strip line 316 on the second end cheek 31 to a first end of a sixth strip line 326 on the outer face of the third side 473 of the trough-like structure 47. A second end of the sixth strip line 326 is connected by an output strip line 336 on the first cheek 33 to a primary output terminal.
To ease manufacture it is desirable that the turns of the primary winding are grouped in multiples of three, so that all the printed boards on the outer faces of the three sides 471, 472, 473 of the trough 47 are identical.
The strip lines 321 through 326 are somewhat thicker than a skin depth so that coupling outside the transformer, particularly to co-located transformers, is minimised. Alternatively a conductive sheet thicker than a skin depth can be placed between co-located transformers.
a shows a simplified end view of the assembled transformer 200. An inner insulating tube 41 is used to locate the secondary toroids 42 and provide voltage hold off for the tubes or rods 301-306 of the primary turns. As shown in
b shows an alternative embodiment 201 of a transformer in which centre conductors are flat strips 401-406 instead of rods or tubes 301-306 as in the previously described embodiment 200.
However, to be fully effective the screening between the primary and secondary also needs to shield the return strips 321 through 326 from the secondary 42.
The screens 2511, 2512 and 2513 may alternatively be realised using printed circuit boards with, for example, 70 μm thick copper conductors (2 oz/ft2) on 1.6 mm thick glass fibre reinforced polymer (GFRP) single-sided copper printed circuit board material (such as FR4) to replace the enclosure 47. The inner face of copper is used as the screen while the outer face of the printed circuit board material may have the return strips 321 through 326 bonded/etched into/onto the printed circuit board material, thereby forming double-sided printed circuit boards.
This adaptation can be used with either of the arrangements of the transformer shown in
Any high power transformer requires cooling and in some embodiments there is provided an inner tube 34, coaxial with the secondary toroids 42, for coolant distribution, the inner tube 34 being supplied with suitable bleed holes, not shown, to direct the coolant towards respective secondary toroids 42. The nature of the primary winding 23 with small radial gaps comprising spaces between the rods 301 to 306 or the strips 401 to 406 means the coolant is readily directed onto the toroids 42 without the structure of the primary winding 23 causing a major barrier as would be the case with a conventional winding.
Referring to
For applications with a 3-phase inverter system, three individual and isolated transformer assemblies of the type described above are provided. Such a system may be as disclosed in GB 0711094.3, in which the primary windings are delta connected and fed from the 3-phase inverter.
The secondaries are connected as illustrated in
The use of a multiple rectifier circuit approach minimises effects of stray capacitance and is desirable as disclosed in GB 0706197.1.
It will be noted that inter-phase coupling between the individual phases is minimized in this arrangement for use with a modified pulse width modulated three phase signal source.
A photograph of a scale model of a transformer according to the invention (without rectifiers) is shown in
Thus
Further measurements were made with a Fluke PM6306A bridge of the shunt inductance on the parallel model Lp and Rp, the winding not being measured being open circuit at both ends.
The leakage inductance was checked at the secondary winding with the primary winding short circuited and floating. The bridge was set to use Ls and Rs series model.
Thus the model established the basic soundness of the principle of the construction technique.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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0813986.7 | Jul 2008 | GB | national |
The present application is a National Stage of International Application No. PCT/GB2009/050942, filed Jul. 29, 2009, designating the United States and claiming priority to Great Britain Application No. GB 0813986.7, Jul. 31, 2008.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/GB2009/050942 | 7/29/2009 | WO | 00 | 3/15/2011 |