Non-ideal inductors in SPICE

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tb1990

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I need to simulate a non-ideal inductor in SPICE (I'm using LtSpice) so that I can test the saturation behaviour of the inductor. I've used this link: The Arbitrary Inductor model - LTwiki and have been able to make the inductor saturate. But I was wondering if there are any better ways to simulate the saturation as the method in the link is rather simple.

Thanks.
 

Did you notice, that the LTSpice help file is referring to two different types of non-linear inductors? The tanh() characteristics discussed in the LTWiki seems to correspond to the simple first varaint. There's however a second built-in model with hysteresis. Other methods from literature are basically available with LTSpice behavioral simulation features.
 
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    tb1990

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I did read the about the built in model, but I'm not sure how I implement it and can't seem to find any documentation for using it.

Edit: I've seen the documentation about the second non-linear model. But I don't know how to apply it in LTSpice, as the example uses netlist, but I can't seem to edit the netlist in LTspice.
 
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Lm is specified as 55.8e-3, Lg should be assumed 0. I would also use the typical Hc value from the hysteresis loop, about 35.

I'm curious, if the model is representing the behaviour of the hard magnetic material correctly.
 
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    tb1990

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I've been able to get inductor to do what I wanted it to. Thanks for your time and help!
 

I take it this isn't right?


Also, if I was to change the current at which the the inductor saturates how would I achieve this?
 

The curve is a correct result of the rectangular hysteresis curve, I assume. To get a B/H curve, you need to plot integral V against I.
 

You can easily accomplish this in PSpice. In PSpice you can model core, to support BH curve non linearity, saturation, effect of air gap etc.
 

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