Efficient methods for the representation of nonlinear saturation and hysteresis in components with magnetic core

This article presents a comparative analysis between two efficient methods for the representation of magnetic saturation in the modelling of saturable reactors, transformers and, in general, in electrical machines. The first approach of saturation representation is based on the arctangent function, which allows a very close fitting of the experimental saturation characteristic with minimal number of parameters and good numerical properties. The second approach is the hyperbolic approximation of the saturation characteristic, one of the most widely used methods because of its proven accuracy. The methods are compared in terms of analytical complexity, computational efficiency, and numerical accuracy.