Inductors are frequently used in railway electrical tractions systems in

filtering and current limiting operations. Magnetic fields are generated due

to the flow of large AC currents through the coils, which intend induce

currents on the coils as well as the metallic components in the vicinity,

causing electromagnetic heating. The heating may cause temperatures to

exceed project temperature requirements and in the worst case distort the

functionality of drive system. The purpose of this work is to simulate the

Electromagnetic Heating effect of inductors in 3D using COMSOL Multiphysics.

First a 3D CAD model of the inductor geometry is imported to

COMSOL and the magnetic fields for a giving current excitation are

estimated. Then the power losses are fed in to a heat flow simulation to

predict the temperature distributions. Cooling is simulated by driving cool

air through the heated coils and the surrounding metal objects. The

temperature distributions for different current excitations and air flow

velocities are estimated. Simulation is performed on conceptual project

inductor model. The 3D inductor modeling approach established in this thesis

work could be used to characterize the electromagnetic heating issues early

in the project design phase.