1554 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 44, NO.

6, JUNE 2008

Prediction of Magnetizing Current Wave-Forms in a Three-Phase Power

Transformer Under DC Bias
Oszkár Bíró1 , Gerhard Buchgraber2 , Gerald Leber2 , and Kurt Preis1
Institute for Fundamentals and Theory in Electrical Engineering (IGTE), Graz University of Technology, A-8010 Graz, Austria
Siemens Transformers Austria GmbH & Company, A-8160 Weiz, Austria

A procedure based on the finite element method (FEM) is presented to determine the strongly distorted wave-forms of the magne-
tizing currents having given direct current (dc) components in each phase of a three-phase power transformer. The three phase voltages
forming a symmetric sinusoidal system are assumed to be known. The relationships between the flux linkages of the three windings
and the three values of the magnetizing current are determined using FEM and assuming static conditions. Suitable techniques are
employed to establish the dependence of the dc components of the three magnetizing currents upon the three bias fluxes. The flux bias
values yielding the given dc components are hence obtained by an iterative method yielding the wave-forms of the magnetizing currents
having the prescribed dc values. The method is illustrated by a numerical example.
Index Terms—Finite element methods, geomagnetism, power transformer losses.

I. INTRODUCTION

G EOMAGNETICALLY induced currents (GIC) have

adverse effects on power transformers. They are direct
currents which flow through the earthed neutrals of high-voltage
star connected windings, adding a dc bias to the magnetizing cur-
rent of the transformer. As a consequence, the transformer core
becomes saturated during the half period in which the bias cur-
rent is in the same direction as the magnetizing current, causing
undesirable effects like increased noise, additional core losses
as well as eddy current losses due to the higher leakage flux [1].
These effects can be predicted by the numerical analysis of
the electromagnetic field in the transformer. In such investiga-
tions, the excitation is the time dependent current density in the
transformer windings determined by the time function of the
magnetizing current.
Fig. 1. Model of a three-phase transformer with a five-limb core. Tank and
The time evolution of the magnetizing current has been windings are transparent. Clamping plates, tie bars as well as tank and yoke
qualitatively characterized in [2]. A magnetic circuit approach shielding are also shown.
based on two-dimensional FEM has been used in [3]–[5].
Experimental results have been presented in [6].
A method based on three-dimensional FEM to determine the are nonlinear. No-load conditions are investigated with the pri-
wave-form of the magnetizing current in a single-phase trans- mary windings only excited by a given sinusoidal symmetric
former has been presented in [7]. In the present paper, this pro- three-phase voltage system. The currents of the windings have
cedure is extended to the three-phase case. a known dc bias modeling a geomagnetic disturbance, their time
functions, however, are unknown.
II. COMPUTATIONAL METHOD B. Computing the Flux Linkage-Current Characteristics
The given sinusoidal voltages
A. Transformer Model
(1)
A three-phase, five limb core transformer is investigated. A
finite element model of the transformer shown in Fig. 1 has (2)
been developed including the core, the windings, the clamping (3)
plates, the tie bars, the tank as well as the tank shielding. The
of the excited windings specify their flux linkages,
model comprises of 242 550 second order hexahedral finite el-
and up to the unknown constant values , and
ements. The tank, the clamping plates and the tie bar are made
of massive steel, whereas the core and the tank shielding are
(4)
manufactured of laminated steel. Both ferromagnetic materials
(5)

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BÍRÓ et al.: PREDICTION OF MAGNETIZING CURRENT WAVE-FORMS IN A THREE-PHASE POWER TRANSFORMER UNDER DC BIAS 1555

In (1)–(6), is the amplitude of the voltage, is the angular

frequency and is time. The relationships between the instan-
taneous values and of the flux linkages of the wind-
ings and of the magnetizing currents, and can be deter-
mined using the finite element model described above with the
eddy currents in the tank, the clamping plates and the tie bar ne-
glected. This approximation is permissible, since the eddy cur-
rents do not appreciably affect the flux linkages of the primary
windings wound around the core limbs. Hence, the functions
, and are determined for
discrete current values by a series of nonlinear magnetostatic
finite element analyses with the currents of the primary wind-
ings prescribed. These have been carried out using a reduced
scalar potential with the known current density of the winding
Fig. 2. 3-D vector defined by the flux linkages of the three windings is repre-
described by an impressed current vector potential expanded in sented by an arrow drawn in a coordinate system defined by the three winding
terms of edge basis functions [8]. The flux linkages of the wind- currents.
ings are then computed from the field distribution [9].

C. Computing the dc-Components ages, i.e., the discrete inverses of the functions
Our aim is to determine the wave-forms and , and . Since these functions are
of the magnetizing currents so that their dc components assume monotonous with and , the inverses are unique. In
given values. These time-functions depend on the time evolu- order to obtain them, it is necessary to interpolate both the
tions (4)–(6) of the flux linkages, i.e., eventually on the bias flux current and the flux linkage between the discrete values.
values , and Let us assume that the discrete current values are
, and
(7) the corresponding flux values obtained by the
(8) FEM analyses are
. The situation
(9)
is illustrated in Fig. 2 by representing the three flux linkage
Using these waveforms, the dc-components values with the aid of an arrow drawn in a coordinate system
of the magnetizing currents can be defined by the three currents.
written as functions of , and Introducing the coordinates
and , and the eight bilinear shape functions for
(10) hexahedral finite elements
with , any three flux
linkage values and can be interpolated from eight
(11) discrete values as

(12) (13)

where is the period. To write (10)–(12), the leakage

flux-current characteristics have to be inverted, i.e., the magne- The eight fluxes stand for
tizing currents have to be obtained from the flux linkages. A
procedure to do this will be introduced in the following section. for some spe-
The integrations have to be carried out using numerical quadra- cific values of and . The corresponding triplet of
ture rules, therefore the relationships between the dc compo- currents is obtained as
nents of the magnetizing currents and of the bias fluxes are
nonlinear functions defined numerically. The given quantities (14)
are , therefore, (10)–(12) represent a set of
nonlinear equations with and as unknowns. This
is solved by the Newton-Raphson method with the derivatives with representing
computed numerically. Inserting the obtained bias fluxes into . stands for
(7)–(9) yields the wave-forms of the magnetizing currents with , and
the prescribed dc values. denotes .
The values of and
D. Inverting the Flux Linkage-Current Characteristics in (13) and (14) coincide if the flux linkages in (13)
Contrary to the case of single-phase transformers, it is not correspond to the currents in (14). Obviously, the eight
trivial to determine the three currents from the three flux link- points and represent the discrete
1556 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 44, NO. 6, JUNE 2008

Fig. 4. Flux linkages of the three windings as functions of i with i =i =

1:5 amperes.
Fig. 3. Cuboid represented by the two consecutive current values in each
winding drawn in the coordinate system defined by these currents. The arrows
represent the three flux values as shown in Fig. 2.

flux-current values used in the FEM analyses. Fig. 3 shows

the eight arrows each representing three winding flux linkages
resulting from the corresponding current values. A cuboid
represented by these currents is also shown. The situation is
similar in all cuboids.
The inversion of the functions
and can now be carried out as follows. Let us
assume that the three values and are given. In order
to determine the corresponding values of the current, the cuboid
has first to be found within which the values and
are interpolated, i.e., and are sought. To achieve this, Fig. 5. Wave-forms of the magnetizing currents in the three phases.
note that the three equations in (13) represent a system of three
nonlinear equations for the unknowns and . This system
is solved with the values of and varied as long as a plot. The distorted waveforms are due to the strong saturation
solution satisfying and illustrated in Fig. 4.
is found. These values of and define the The computed current waveforms have been used to carry out
cuboid, and setting in (14) yields the corresponding an eddy current analysis of the transformer with the phase-cur-
triplet of currents. rents prescribed. The model of Fig. 1 has been simplified to con-
centrate on the losses in the tie bars. Only a quarter of the trans-
former geometry has been modeled and the tank, the shieldings
III. NUMERICAL EXAMPLE
and the clamping plates have been disregarded. Around each
The method presented in Sections II-B–II-D has been applied limb, one winding has been assumed carrying the magnetizing
to the power transformer described in Section II-A. The dis- currents shown in Fig. 5.
crete values of the current in each phase have been chosen to The formulation used is based on the current vector potential
be combined with the magnetic scalar potential [10]. Time stepping
and 0.0 amperes , i.e., has been used and a direct iteration technique employed to treat
analyses had to be carried out to obtain the flux linkage-current nonlinearity [11]. It turned out to be necessary to step through
characteristics. For currents higher than 60.0 A, linear extrapo- ten periods to reach steady-state, requiring about four days of
lation has been used. Although each computation took less than computation.
10 minutes, several days were necessary to obtain the charac- In order to validate the interpolation technique used, the time-
teristics even though four processors worked parallel. As an ex- function of the flux linkage in each phase has been computed
ample, the three flux linkages are shown in Fig. 4 as functions from the results of the transient computation during the 10th
of with and fixed. period using the method of [9]. These time-functions are com-
The required dc component of the current in each phase has pared in Fig. 6 to the exact time functions given in (4)–(6). The
been set to the values 6.1, 12.16, 25.33, and 50.66 amperes. flux linkage bias values therein are also computed values. The
The frequency is 60 Hz. As an example, the waveforms of the curves fit well generally, but there are deviations at times when
three magnetizing current time-functions for the case of the change of the currents is fast. These deviations are due to
amperes are shown in Fig. 5. The phase the errors introduced by the interpolation and could be reduced
shift of 120 between the three currents is obvious. The negative by refining the time discretization used for computing the flux
values are below 1.0 ampere and are therefore invisible in the linkage-current characteristics.
BÍRÓ et al.: PREDICTION OF MAGNETIZING CURRENT WAVE-FORMS IN A THREE-PHASE POWER TRANSFORMER UNDER DC BIAS 1557

in the paper for inverting the flux-linkage-current characteris-

tics obtained by FEM leads to current wave-forms consistent
with the prescribed voltage. Once the inverse characteristics are
available, the current wave-forms are yielded by solving a non-
linear system with no more than three degrees of freedom.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported in part by the Austrian Research
Promotion Agency Ltd under project 809934 and in part by the
Styrian Business Promotion Agency under project 1000010708.

Fig. 6. Comparison of the flux linkage time-functions resulting from the com- REFERENCES
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The computation of the magnetizing current wave-forms in
three-phase transformers under dc bias requires the determi-
nation of the currents from the fluxes, a task not easily facili- Manuscript received June 24, 2007. Corresponding author: O. Bíró (e-mail:
tated by a FEM analysis. The interpolation technique introduced [email protected]).