Fabrication-Specific Simulation of Mn-Zn Ferrite Core-Loss for Machine Learning-Based Surrogate Modeling With Limited Experimental Data

Mn-Zn ferrite is widely used as a core material in power electronic applications. However, core-loss modeling is challenging owing to the complexity of core-loss mechanisms and associated factors. The scarcity of experimental data is another significant impediment to the development of Mn-Zn ferrites. In this study, we propose a novel data-driven framework to construct an effective machine learning (ML) based surrogate model for estimating the core-loss of Mn-Zn ferrites. We developed a fabrication-specific finite element analysis model, simulating the experimental results of fabricated Mn-Zn ferrites, to generate simulation-driven data for expanding the training dataset. We considered various ML techniques for material property estimations in the fabrication-specific simulation and core-loss calculations. A case study using six limited experimental datasets with sample sizes of 3, 6, 8, 12, 20, and 30 showed that the proposed ML-based surrogate model can estimate core-loss with an accuracy of approximately 91.78%, a 17% increase in accuracy compared to the Steinmetz equation-based model. With the inclusion of the fabrication-specific simulation data, the accuracy of the ML-based surrogate model improved more rapidly as the amount of experimental data increased, and the models exhibited enhanced converged accuracy. Notably, the accuracy of each surrogate model was significantly enhanced for a sample size of less than 8, resulting in an improvement of approximately 35%.