Thermal modeling of high frequency DC–DC switching modules: Electromagnetic and thermal simulation of magnetic components

This work focuses on the accurate thermal modeling of magnetic components for power converters. The inductors of a 1.8 MHz DC–DC switching converter are simulated using the Finite-Element (FE) approach with a three-step procedure: (i) electrical simulation for Joule power loss; (ii) electromagnetic simulation for core losses and eddy currents; (iii) thermal simulation for temperature distribution calculation. The magnetic component models can be used in the full converter FE thermal simulation for design optimization and estimation of reliability hazards.