Scholarlink

<p>The energy industry demands high electrical and thermal conductive materials with good manufacturability, highlighting the importance of copper alloys. A significant share of material in each power transformer is copper alloys, from windings and cables to copper contacts and conductors. Current manufacturing methods including hot forging, casting, and machining limit the engineers to design the optimized geometries. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a highly desired layer-by-layer fabrication process from a 3D digital model. Being additive-based, these processes benefit from minimal material waste, freedom of design, reduced time to market, and eliminating the cost of special tooling. In this paper, design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) is employed to optimize the design of candidate copper contacts with the goal of mass reduction and keeping the thermo-electrical requirements standards in transformers. Re-designed copper contacts with 25–53% mass reduction were printed with different copper additive manufacturing methods and powders to determine the best technology and copper alloys for power transformer applications. Finally, an extensive set of tests showed the great potential of replacing copper contact manufacturing methods with additive manufacturing techniques. The results demonstrated that the printed copper parts exhibit comparable or superior mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. Furthermore, surface roughness analysis, microstructural analysis, and density measurements show favorable results, collectively justifying the replacement of the copper contact manufacturing method with additive manufacturing.</p> Graphical abstract

错误：搜索内容不能为空，请输入英文关键词
错误：关键词超出字数限制，请精简
高级检索

Design optimization and additive manufacturing of copper contacts in power transformers

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年5月4日

查看全文
  • Elham Haghighat Naeini,
  • Nikhil Joseph Ebi,
  • Robert Sekula,
  • Tomasz Nowak,
  • Edelvays Cherchelanov

摘要

The energy industry demands high electrical and thermal conductive materials with good manufacturability, highlighting the importance of copper alloys. A significant share of material in each power transformer is copper alloys, from windings and cables to copper contacts and conductors. Current manufacturing methods including hot forging, casting, and machining limit the engineers to design the optimized geometries. Additive manufacturing (AM) is a highly desired layer-by-layer fabrication process from a 3D digital model. Being additive-based, these processes benefit from minimal material waste, freedom of design, reduced time to market, and eliminating the cost of special tooling. In this paper, design for additive manufacturing (DfAM) is employed to optimize the design of candidate copper contacts with the goal of mass reduction and keeping the thermo-electrical requirements standards in transformers. Re-designed copper contacts with 25–53% mass reduction were printed with different copper additive manufacturing methods and powders to determine the best technology and copper alloys for power transformer applications. Finally, an extensive set of tests showed the great potential of replacing copper contact manufacturing methods with additive manufacturing techniques. The results demonstrated that the printed copper parts exhibit comparable or superior mechanical, thermal, and electrical properties. Furthermore, surface roughness analysis, microstructural analysis, and density measurements show favorable results, collectively justifying the replacement of the copper contact manufacturing method with additive manufacturing.

Graphical abstract