Abstract
Induction cooktops are more and more used in the houses with increasing market in comparison with gas cooktops and resistance or halogen cooktops. The main reasons for this are the higher energy efficiency, the low heating times, the controllability of the power delivered to the pot, the safety with reference to the low temperature of the glass, the superior cleanability. The main core of the Induction Hob (IH) is constituted by the power electronics board and the inductor which are strictly correlated in the sense that the frequency converter (the frequency operating range is 20–100 kHz) must be designed in order to correctly resonate with the coil in order to achieve its optimum efficiency over the broadest possible operation range; this means that the inductor must be designed in order to fulfill the Zero Voltage switching condition of the frequency converter over the whole range of operation. These requirements are much more important in the quasi resonant converters for the limitations in the controllability of soft switch mode of solid state switching. In the paper a design procedure based on a fully 3D FEM model of the inductor coupled with the frequency converter circuit is presented. The simulation results will be discussed and compared with experimental data.
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