The way SPICE handles transformers has had a lot of bad press.
This has had the effect of too many researchers giving up at the first hurdle, and producing models which contain no inductors, work down to DC, and are unidirectional.
We have shown that SPICE is perfectly capable of simulating all of the commonly-used transformer configurations, and producing results which reflect the real world.
Preprint Modelling Real-World Linear and Non-Linear Inductors and Tra...
The work is interesting and includes important information regarding Transformer and Inductor modeling in SPICE. The article is also well written.
I have the following comments about the preprint:
1. The transformer model did not consider any air gap. The frequency for the transformer model designed for Baxandall Inverter is set as 1 kHz. In medium to low frequency transformer often air gap exists. Air gap significantly impacts the permeability of the ferrite core. Therefore, in my opinion, it would be good to declare this in consideration that the transformer is modeled with ferrite core without any gap.
2. In Figure 9 (page 11), it is written that the amplitude stabilizes after about 20 cycles. But from Fig 9, it seems that there is slight increment in amplitudes in the waveform. A simulation window containing more cycles will be helpful to realize the stability of the waveforms (for example VPA, VPB, VOUT waveforms).
3. It is mentioned in the article that the modeling of leakage inductance is out of scope of the article. But what about parasitic capacitance of the transformer ? Particularly, in high voltage transformer design, the parasitic components such as leakage inductance and parasitic capacitance plays a critical role.
Reference: J. A. Martin-Ramos, A. M. Pernia, J. Diaz, F. Nuno and J. A. Martinez, "Power Supply for a High-Voltage Application," in IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 1608-1619, July 2008, doi: 10.1109/TPEL.2008.925153.
In page 12, an ignition coil design the primary and secondary turns numbers are 250 and 25000 presented in the table. Such numbers of winding will leads to much higher leakage inductance and parasitic capacitance which should not be avoided in the modeling stage. Therefore, if the SPICE model ignores these non-idealities (particularly in the high voltage transformer/ coil design), the model will lose reliability.
Showrov Rahman : Thank you for your excellent and pertinent critique. I shall update the paper accordingly.
Showrov Rahman I have incorporated your suggestions, and re-published the paper. Thank you again for your help.
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