Fast and Accurate Inductance Calculations for Arbitrarily - Wound Coils for Pulsed Power Applications

Numerical modeling for certain pulsed power applications requires repeated and accurate calculation of the time-dependent inductance for complex geometries. Several models are available for inductance calculations. For loosely-wound coils, in particular, these methods suffer either from the problem of low accuracy, or are computationally very expensive. We present an efficient and accurate method for calculating the inductance of arbitrarily-wound helical coils. This method evaluates the line integral of the magnetic vector potential along the current-carrying path and offers two advantages. Firstly, it reduces the computational time for complex geometries by as much as 1-2 orders of magnitude as compared to area-integral methods. Secondly, it can accurately handle turn-splitting as well as other design details that violate axisymmetry.