Reduced FEA-state space modeling of stationary magnetic devices

A method to automatically create low order state-space models for magnetic devices is set forth. The method begins with geometrical and materials data from which the finite element analysis is used to build a high order state-space model. It is shown that this model, while accurate within the tolerance of the material properties data, contains far more state variables than are necessary to achieve such accuracy. It is shown that the full-order model can be reduced methodically without additional assumptions. The method is applicable directly to magnetically linear systems, but applies to a wide range of power electronics applications and can be a basis for future nonlinear device modeling. The method reduced an example inductor model from 882 state variables to two and is verified experimentally.