Evaluation of computational models for electromagnetic force calculation in transformer windings using finite-element method

Computer simulations are currently one of the most used methods on transformer’s short circuit analysis. For them to be effective, an accurate characterization of the transformer core and geometric representation of windings is essential. Hence, this work investigated the influence of core characterization and different geometric representations on magnetic flux density (MFD) and electromagnetic forces (EF) calculated during short circuits. A comparative study using simulations based on the finite-element method (FEM) were carried out for a 180 MVA transformer model. First, the influence of the nonlinear characteristic of the core B-H curve on EF was analyzed. Then, three two-dimensional (2D) axisymmetric and one three-dimensional (3D) representations were compared. Results indicate there is no significant difference in EF with a core represented by a constant value of permeability. Also, 2D-axisymmetric geometric representations underestimate radial forces and diverge significantly on axial forces in comparison with the 3D representation. Differences up to 99% between the calculated total axial forces were obtained for the analyzed cases. In addition, representations with greater level of detail result in magnetic force density up to 5.5 times greater than that obtained with the simplified representation.