A novel simulation of AC magnetic contactor based on electromagnetic transients program

This paper proposes a new simulation approach for the AC magnetic contactor using the electromagnetic transients program (EMTP). The duality transformation technique is applied to convert a magnetic model into an electrical model. The great advantages of the proposed model are its capability of being directly simulated with other electrical components using EMTP and, therefore, its minimum level of complexity. To enhance the precision of the proposed model, the saturation of magnetic core and the fringing flux effects are taken into account. The performance and accuracy of the proposed model are verified by comparing them with those from finite element method (FEM) simulations and experiments. The results confirm that the proposed model has very good performance and the technique can be further applied to other magnetic components. © 2014 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.