Prediction of oil flow and temperature distribution of transformer winding based on multi-field coupled approach

• Main Authors: Longnv Li, Wei Liu, Hai Chen, Xiaoming Liu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2019-04-01
• Series: The Journal of Engineering
• Subjects: temperature distribution; transformer windings; eddy current losses; autotransformers; power transformers; computational fluid dynamics; finite element analysis; oil flow; multifield coupled approach; oil-filled transformers; winding area; transformer winding discs; 3D fluid-thermal coupled method; electromagnetic field effects; thermal field effects; single-phase auto-transformer; finite element method; analytical method; voltage 500.0 kV
• Online Access: https://digital-library.theiet.org/content/journals/10.1049/joe.2018.8718

For large oil-filled transformers, the oil flow and temperature distribution in transformer windings are an essential issue to be addressed. However, the computation of the oil flow and temperature distribution is a complicated engineering problem because of the complex physical structure of the winding area and the coupled effect of electromagnetic, fluid and thermal fields. This study presents a multi-filed coupled approach to compute and analyse the oil flow and temperature distribution of the winding area for an ODFS-334 MVA/500 kV single-phase auto-transformer. The eddy current losses of the transformer winding discs are computed based on the combined finite element and analytical method, and the computational fluid dynamics based on 3D fluid-thermal coupled method is used to calculate the oil flow and temperature properties of the prototype. The computation of the oil flow and temperature distribution reveals accurately the hot spot of the transformer. To validate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed method, the numerical results obtained using the proposed method are compared with those of the experimental ones.