Impact of Material on the Iron Losses of a Reactor With an Air Gap

The iron losses of a reactor with an air gap are investigated and compared for three different magnetic materials, namely, grain-oriented material (GO230), high performance non-oriented Fe-Si metal (super E ST125), and nanocrystalline soft magnetic material (FINEMET FT-3M). The iron losses of the reactor are measured by the experiments for different voltage supply frequencies and amplitudes. The measured data are compared with the material iron losses that are calculated from the manufacturer's material datasheets. It is concluded that the air gap is responsible for a large part of the increase between the reactor and material iron losses and that the FT-3M has sensibly higher building factor compared with the other materials.