how much current throught a given inductor ?

[TripACT]

heya guys,

how can i know how much maximum current can i drive through a given inductor value (Henry) or bindings (N) without causing the inductor saturate ?
is there any way to figure?

Gary

 

[BradtheRad]

An air coil does not saturate. However you will see current reach a maximum based on ohmic resistance.

As for a metal core...

Run a low frequency sinewave through it. There needs to be little impedance.

Put a low ohm resistor inline with the coil. Connect oscilloscope leads across the resistor.

Where you see current reaching a peak and flattening out, that is the point of inductive saturation. The core has reached the maximum intensity of the flux field it can support.

Keep a finger touching the coil because you may overheat it by sending sufficiently high current through it.

 

[TripACT]

Thanks but I'm not building one, just want to simulate a transformer in pspice. So i know I need to be able to pull 20A through the transformer, which are two inductors with N transformation factor.

I want to calculate which primary and secondary inductors will be able to tolerate 20A without over heat. Talking about metal core.

Gary

 

[goldsmith]

Dear Gary
Hi
How much is your voltage ? ( vout and vin ?) is that iout (20A)
Best Wishes
Goldsmith

 

[TripACT]

Hi,

It would be three phase step down metal core transformer.
I'd be emulating it with three separate single phase coupled inductors, each with 120 degree phase shift. It works nice. It would be 230vac per phase to 24 vac per phase, 50Hz AC frequency.

I chose 50mH for the primary inductor and 544.446uH for the secondary to have the right step down ratio.

Gary

 

[goldsmith]

Hi Gary
In this example we can neglect from dissipations of your transformer . hence , you can choose : V/I=XL and then --------> L=XL/omega .