Influence of Power Losses in the Inductor Core on Characteristics of Selected DC-DC Converters

The paper presents the results of a computer simulation illustrating the influence of power losses in the core of an inductor based on the characteristics of buck and boost converters. In the computations, the authors' model of power losses in the core is used. Correctness of this model is verified experimentally for three different magnetic materials. Computations are performed with the use of this model and the Excel software for inductors including cores made of ferrite, powdered iron, and nanocrystalline material in a wide range of load resistance, as well as input voltage of both the considered converters operating at different values of switching frequency. The obtained computation results show that power losses in the inductor core and watt-hour efficiency of converters strongly depend on the material used to make this core, in addition to the input voltage and parameters of the control signal and load resistance of the considered converters. The obtained results of watt-hour efficiency of the considered direct current (DC)-DC converters show that it changes up to 30 times in the considered ranges of the mentioned factors. In turn, in the same operating conditions, values of power losses in the considered cores change from a fraction of a watt to tens of watts. The paper also considers the issue of which material should be used to construct the inductor core in order to obtain the highest value of watt-hour efficiency at selected operation conditions of the considered converters.