Power Magnetics @ High Frequency
Date: Saturday March 3 2018
APEC 2018 San Antonio Texas

he PSMA Magnetics Committee and IEEE PELS will conduct the third "Power Magnetics @ High Frequency" workshop on Saturday, March 3 2018, which is the day before and at the same venue as APEC 2018 in San Antonio, TX.

The purpose and focus of the workshop is to identify the latest improvements in magnetic materials, coil (winding) design, construction and fabrication, evaluation and characterization techniques and modelling and simulation tools so as to target the advancements that are deemed necessary by the participants for power magnetics to meet the technical expectations and requirements of new market applications for higher operating frequencies and emerging topologies being driven by continuous advances in circuits topologies and semi-conductor devices.

The target audiences for the workshop include the designers of power magnetic components for use in electronic power converters responsible to implement the most technologically advanced power magnetic components to achieve higher power densities, specific physical aspect ratios such as low profile, higher power efficiencies and improved thermal performance. The target audiences also include people involved in the supply chain for the power magnetics industry ranging from manufacturers of magnetic materials and magnetic structures, fabricators of magnetic components, providers of modelling and simulation software as well as manufacturers of test and characterization equipment.

The workshop will begin with a keynote presentation by Charles Sullivan from The Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth College providing a technical overview of the topics to be covered within the workshop. The keynote presentation will be complemented by a Q&A session to address specific details of interest of the workshop attendees.

The second session of the workshop will be a technical presentation session addressing various topics associated with ac power losses. In addition to the brief Q&A after each individual presentation there will be a panel of the presenters at the end of the session who will address topics requiring more detail as deemed by the workshop attendees.  The proposed topics for this session are as follows:

• Methods to characterize and model ac power loss
• Presentation formats of magnetics performance data to facilitate component design
• Impact of various effects (for example dimensional effects of magnetic core physical size) on ac power losses
• Influence of magnetic materials and conductors on ac power loss
• Design techniques, simulation tools and modelling
• Power conversion topologies and applications driving reduction of physical size while improving the efficiency of power magnetics technologies

The third session of the workshop will be an interactive session of table top technology demonstrations each addressing specific technical disciplines and capabilities consistent with the workshop agenda. The session will begin with a brief overview and mapping of the technology demonstration stations. Each technology demonstration station will provide a ten minute presentation at fifteen minute intervals. Interaction between the attendees and the presenters is highly encouraged during this portion of agenda as segue from the opening keynote presentation and the technical issues session. The technical disciplines expected to be displayed during the technical demonstration session include:

• Ac power loss measurements
• Core loss modelling and/or simulation with empirical verification
• Inductor modelling supported by empirical verification
• Near magnetic field measurements
• Thermal measurements
• Impedance measurements
• Engineering methodology specific to new structures and/or magnetic materials including both modeling and verification
• Roadmaps addressing the needs of the power magnetics industry
• Standardization activity addressing any of the above topics

If anyone would like to participate as a presenter for the technical demonstration session, please contact Matt Wilkowski at matt.wilkowski@intel.com with a description of your proposed technical capabilities topic. We are limited to nine technology demonstration sessions.

The fourth session of the workshop will be a technical presentation session addressing topics associated with fringing based upon responses to the survey for the previous 2017 workshop. In addition to the brief Q&A after each individual presentation there will be panel of the presenters at the end of the to address topics requiring more detail as deemed by the workshop attendees. The proposed topics for this session are:

• Impact of coil winding,
• Impact of core shape,
• Impact of distributed gap cores,
• Impact on measured ac power losses
• Near magnetic field considerations.

The specifics for the workshop structure and the presentations for the workshop are currently in progress and are not finalized. If anyone can support a strong position for a specific topic that would be of general interest to the magnetics and the power industries, please contact Matt Wilkowski at matt.wilkowski@intel.com.

More details regarding the agenda for the workshop as well as registration for the workshop will become available on the PSMA website (www.psma.com/technical-forums/magnetics/workshop) over the coming months.

Organizing Committee

Khurram Afridi, University of Colorado Boulder
Ali Bazzi, University of Connecticut
Steve Carlsen, Raytheon
Ed Herbert
Rodney Rogers, All Star Magnetics
Laili Wang, Xi'an Jiaotong University
Fred Weber, Future Technology Worldwide
Chuck Wild, Dexter Magnetics
Matt Wilkowski, Intel

If you or anyone in your company is interested in getting on the distribution list for future issues of PSMA UPDATE, please send e-mail to: power@psma.com. Be sure to include your name and the name of your company.