The accurate calculation of the inductance is the most basic problem of the inductor design. In this paper, the core flux density distribution and leakage flux in core window and winding of core-type inductor are analyzed by finite element analysis (FEA) firstly. Based on it, an improved magnetic equivalent circuit with high accuracy flux density distribution (iMEC) is proposed for a single-phase core-type inductor. Depend on the geometric structure, two leakage paths of the core window are modeled. Furthermore, the iMEC divides the magnetomotive force of the winding into the corresponding core branch. It makes the core flux density distribution consistent with the FEA distribution to improve the accuracy of the inductance. In the iMEC, flux density of the core leg has an error less than 5.6% compared to FEA simulation at 150A. The maximum relative error of the inductance is less than 8.5% and the average relative error is less than 6% compared to the physical prototype test data. At the same time, due to the high computational efficiency of iMEC, it is very suitable for the population-based optimization design.

An efficient finite element-integral equation method is presented for calculating scattered fields from conducting objects. By combining the integral equation solution with the finite element method, this formulation allows a finite element computational domain terminated very closely to the scatterer and thus results in the decrease of the resultant matrix size. Furthermore, we employ a new integral approach to establish the boundary condition on the finite element terminating surface. The expansion of the fields on the integration contour is not related to the fields on the terminating surface, hence we obtain an explicit expression of the boundary condition on the terminating surface. Using this explicit boundary condition with the finite element solution, our method substantially improves the computational efficiency and relaxes the computer memory requirements. Only one matrix inversion is needed through our formulation and the generation and storing of a full matrix is not necessary as compared with the conventional hybrid finite element methods. The validity and accuracy of the formulation are checked by some numerical solutions of scattering from two-dimensional metallic cylinders, which are compared with the results of other methods and/or measured data.