See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/358281951

Load noise prediction of a power transformer

Article in Journal of Vibration and Control · August 2021

DOI: 10.1177/10775463211036816

CITATION READS

1 52

5 authors, including:

Booyeong Lee Kyuho Lee

HANKOOK TIRE Hyosung Corporation
7 PUBLICATIONS 9 CITATIONS 7 PUBLICATIONS 45 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Jintai Chung
Hanyang University, Ansan, South Korea
159 PUBLICATIONS 5,299 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

Robust design technology development for the noise and vibration reduction of a radiator cooling fan View project

Low Noise Transformer Development View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Booyeong Lee on 02 February 2022.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Original Manuscript
Journal of Vibration and Control
2021, Vol. 0(0) 1–9

Load noise prediction of a power © The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
transformer DOI: 10.1177/10775463211036816
journals.sagepub.com/home/jvc

Booyeong Lee1, Kyuho Lee2, Chuljun Park2, Seokwon Ryu1 and

Jintai Chung1,3

Abstract
In this article, we propose a new regression equation to predict the noise of a power transformer based on the winding
vibration under a loading condition. A regression between load noises and tank vibrations for multiple transformers with
different rated powers was confirmed through measurements and regression analysis. A regression equation for load noise
and winding vibration was derived considering the fact that the winding vibration level is proportional to the tank vibration
level. The electromagnetic force, which is the excitation force of the winding, was obtained using the equivalent magnetic
circuit network method to obtain the winding vibration required for the regression equation. Subsequently, the obtained force
was applied to a finite element model for the winding to achieve the vibration response. The winding vibration obtained
through these methods is closely correlated with the load noise, and the amount of winding vibration transferred to the tank
could be changed according to the distance between the tank and the winding. Accordingly, an equation for predicting the load
noise was established considering the winding vibration and the correlation factors according to the distance of the
transmission path. The proposed prediction equation is considerably more accurate than the previous prediction equation.

Keywords
Winding vibration, load noise prediction, electromagnetic force, power transformer, regression equation

1. Introduction attempted to obtain the load noise level using computer

As the downtown areas of cities continue to expand, resi-
dential areas have been approaching the vicinity of existing
substations. Consequently, the noise problem of substations
has become a subject of interest. Several countries, such as the
United States and European countries, have strictly applied
noise regulations in substation boundaries. Thus, transformer
manufacturers have continued to study noise to satisfy noise
regulations and enhance their market competitiveness.
Several studies have been conducted on transformer
noise for the past 40 years. Among these studies, experi-
mental studies examining the effect of the core design
parameters on transformer noise are summarized as follows.
Reports have been published on the effects of the magnetic
core material on the transformer noise (Moses, 1974;
Reiplinger, 1980; Tanzer et al., 2018; Weiser et al., 2000),
a correlation between the noise and the compressive stress
of the core in the rolling direction (Mizokami and Kurosaki,
2015, 2016), the variation of noise level according to the
design of the core (Snell, 2008; Valkovic, 1994), and
the vibration mechanism of the core and the influence of the
core vibration on noise (Moses et al., 2016).
To deal with the limitations of the prediction equations
considering design parameters, some researchers have
simulation tools. Ertl and Voss (2014) presented a numerical
method to estimate the load noise level using the winding
vibration computed through a finite element model of the
winding to analyze the effect of harmonic components of
the load current on the load noise. Based on the finite el-
ement and boundary element methods, Rausch et al. (2002)
proposed a new noise analysis method including the cal-
culation of electromagnetic, mechanical, and acoustic fields
for an accurate and efficient prediction of the load noise. Hu
et al. (2016) analyzed and predicted the electromagnetic
noise using the vibrations of the core and winding by
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University, Ansan,
Republic of Korea
2
Noise and Vibration Technology Team, Hyosung Heavy Industries,
Changwon-si, Republic of Korea
3
BK21 FOUR ERICA-ACE Center, Hanyang University, Ansan, Republic of
Korea
Received: 21 April 2021; accepted: 15 July 2021
Corresponding author:
Jintai Chung, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Hanyang University,
55 Hanyangdeahak-ro, Sangnok-gu, Ansan 15588, Republic of Korea.
Email: jchung@hanyang.ac.kr
2 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
calculating the electromagnetic, mechanical, and acoustic
fields. Estimating the load noise accurately using these nu-
merical analysis methods requires a multiphysics analysis for
calculating the fields in which mechanics, acoustics, and
electromagnetism are coupled, which is expensive and time-
consuming. A global community committed to the collab-
orative development and sharing of power system expertise,
CIGRE, collected and analyzed the no-load and load noise
data for transformers of many manufacturers to make
standards. In the working group report of CIGRE, Ploetner
and Almeida (2020) presented an improved model for three-
phase 50 Hz and 60 Hz transformers to provide guidance
toward more realistic load sound level specifications. Al-
Abadi (2019) investigated the design parameters influencing
the load noise generated by power transformers. He evalu-
ated the calculated noise by using an advanced vibro-acoustic
model and benchmarked it against measured sound levels of
transformers with different ratings and designs.
Even though empirical equations (Girgis et al. (2011)
and Hsu et al. (2017)) and multiphysics analysis (Hu et al.
(2016)) were proposed to predict the load noise of trans-
formers, they have the following limitations. As the pre-
viously published prediction equations for the load noise
only considered the electrical specifications and design
parameters without considering the winding vibration, the
predicted noise level shows a large deviation from the actual
value. Multiphysics analysis has drawbacks in that it re-
quires significant computation time and cost because it
requires complex modeling including that of electromag-
netic, mechanical, and acoustic fields and large-scale
computations. Accordingly, it is necessary to develop
a prediction equation that can calculate the load noise of the
transformer relatively accurately in a short time and at a low
cost by overcoming the limitations of the two previous
methods (Girgis et al. (2011), Hsu et al. (2017), and Hu et al.
(2016)). Therefore, to overcome these limitations, this study
aims to develop an equation that can predict load noise with
relatively high accuracy in a short time by considering
winding vibration. Compared with the previously published
prediction equations for the load noise of the transformer,
the prediction equation proposed in this article not only
predicts the noise in a short time, like the previous equa-
tions, but also considers the winding vibration, which
makes the predicted results more accurate. Thus, the
originality and contribution of this study lie in the fact that
the proposed equation considers the vibration, enhancing
the accuracy of the predicted results.
2. Measurement of load noise and tank
vibration
A transformer consists of a tank, an oil conservator, bushings,
radiators and fans, and the side walls of the tank are supported
by reinforcement ribs. The inside of the tank is composed of
Figure 1. Power transformer considered in this study.
three-phase windings and a three-limb core passing through
the center of the windings, as shown in Figure 1, and the
remaining space is filled with insulating oil.
The noise was measured by selecting noise measurement
positions in accordance with IEC 60076-10 (IEC, 2016),
which is the international standard related to the power
transformer noise, to measure the load noise of the trans-
former. The load noise was evaluated by measuring the
sound power, which was calculated from the sound intensity
measured using a sound intensity method that is not sig-
nificantly affected by background noise, sound reflections,
and near-field effects. The surface that passes through the
line connecting the outer surface of the transformer and is
perpendicular to the ground is called the principal radiating
surface. The surface 0.3 m away from the principal radiating
surface is referred to as the prescribed contour. On the
prescribed contour, microphones were installed to measure
the sound intensity at intervals of 1 m. The load noise levels
obtained for 32 transformers are summarized in Table 1
along with their rated powers. In this table, the names of the
transformers are indicated simply by the symbols T1 to T32.
Frequency analysis was performed on the noise mea-
sured for the transformers T1 to T32. The noise signal
measured in the time domain was converted to the fre-
quency domain by applying A-weighting with a resolution
of 1/3 octave band using a spectrum analyzer (B&K 3050-
B-060). Figure 2 shows a 1/3-octave band frequency
spectrum of the sound intensity measured at any position of
transformer T1. As the trend of the frequency spectrum of
the noise does not differ significantly depending on the
measurement positions or transformers, the noise analysis
was performed with the spectrum shown in Figure 2. As
illustrated in this figure, the level of the octave band cor-
responding to the center frequency of 125 Hz including
120 Hz, which is double the power frequency component of
60 Hz, is 64.1 dBA, which is much higher than that of other
bands. In other words, the tonal noise of 120 Hz, which is
twice the power frequency, dominates the overall noise.
This phenomenon is related to the frequency characteristics
of the electromagnetic force generated in the windings, and
the reason for this is discussed in detail in Section 4.
Lee et al. 3

Table 1. Rated power and load noise level for transformers.

Model Rated power (MVA) Noise level (dBA) Model Rated power (MVA) Noise level (dBA)
T1 115 88.7 T17 54 89.3
T2 591 102.5 T18 280 91.1
T3 421 99.6 T19 100 88.1
T4 150 86.9 T20 27 90.8
T5 200 92.8 T21 75 88.6
T6 300 100.1 T22 90 81.6
T7 591 96.1 T23 120 84.2
T8 67 91.3 T24 267 81.5
T9 60 78.0 T25 50 75.2
T10 100 88.0 T26 120 85.2
T11 400 91.5 T27 67 88.9
T12 25 66.0 T28 675 91.4
T13 50 77.8 T29 405 82.3
T14 75 85.1 T30 84 82.1
T15 100 92.8 T31 50 74.1
T16 73 92.1 T32 30 90.3

Figure 2. 1/3-octave band frequency spectrum for the measured Figure 3. Load noise level versus transformer rated power.
load noise.

value of R2 of the regression curve in Figure 3 is 0.33, the

The correlation between the rated power and the load
noise level was analyzed for the transformers shown in
Table 1. For the 32 transformers shown in Table 1, the load
noise level according to the rated power is illustrated in
Figure 3, where the circular symbol represents the measured
data, and the solid red line is a regression curve of the
logarithmic function fitted to the data using the least squares
method. The regression curve in Figure 3 was evaluated
with the coefficient of determination (usually indicated as
R2) and root mean squared error (RMSE) that were used in
the regression analysis. R2 has a value between 0 and 1, and
the higher the correlation between the data, the closer it is to
1. RMSE is a measure for evaluating the accuracy of
a regression curve, and it shows how much the measured
and predicted values are distributed on average. As the
rated power has a very low correlation with the load noise.
Furthermore, the RMSE value is 6.5 dBA, indicating that
the deviation between the predicted and measured values is
very large.
Figure 4 shows the load noise levels according to the
tank vibrations for transformers T1 to T32. In Figure 4, the
circular symbol represents the measured data, and the red
line is the logarithmic regression curve fitted in the same
way as the curve in Figure 3. The values of R2 and RMSE of
this regression curve are 0.92 and 2.19 dBA, respectively.
Compared with the results of the correlation of the rated
power and load noise, as illustrated in Figure 4, the value of
R2 is increased by 0.59, and the RMSE value is reduced by
4.31 dBA, indicating a smaller deviation between the
predicted and measured values. Therefore, as the magnitude
4 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
Figure 4. Load noise level versus tank vibration level.
of the winding vibration has a closer correlation with the
load noise level compared with the rated power, repre-
senting the load noise level as a function of the magnitude of
the winding vibration makes the prediction of the load noise
more accurate.
3. Electromagnetic force analysis
Before predicting the winding vibration, electromagnetic
analysis models for the three-phase transformer with three
limbs were established to calculate the electromagnetic
force that excites windings. The winding in which several
layers of copper wires are wound was simplified to a cyl-
inder-shaped solid with a copper material. The tank and
clamps shown in Figure 1 were neglected based on the
assumption that they have a negligible effect on the elec-
tromagnetic force of the windings, and the insulators and oil
between the core, winding, and tank were modeled as air
because their relative permeability is similar to that of air.
The oil level may have an important influence on the
vibration transmission which is closely related to transformer
noise. Jin and Pan (2016) presented a study on the fact that oil
affects vibration transmission and they found that oil in-
creases vibration transmission in the low-frequency range
and decreases vibration transmission in the high-frequency
range. However, Kulkarni and Khaparde (2013) claimed the
pressure generated by vibrations of the core and windings in
a transformer is transmitted to tank surfaces through oil but
the vibrations are transmitted without appreciable damping.
Since the inside of the transformer tank of this study is always
filled with oil, the oil level was not considered in this article.
Finite element models for the simplified analysis model
were constructed for the finite-element–based electromag-
netic analysis. The finite element mesh for the 32 trans-
formers described in Table 1 was established using Gmsh
(Geuzaine and Remacle, 2009), which is a finite element
generation program. The finite element used was a hex-
ahedral element with a node in the center, and the average
Figure 5. Finite element model for the cores and windings of
transformer T1.
total number of nodes used was approximately 223,000.
Figure 5 shows the electromagnetic finite element model for
the cores and windings of transformer T1, where the finite
element of air is not illustrated to show the finite elements of
the core and windings.
Numerical analysis of electromagnetic fields was per-
formed using the three-dimensional (3D) equivalent mag-
netic circuit network (EMCN) method to calculate the
electromagnetic force generated in the winding (Sim et al.,
2018). First, the EMCN was constructed by linking all the
nodes of the electromagnetic finite element model by circuit
parameters to calculate the magnetic volume force. As it is
difficult to show the EMCN for the entire system, we will
discuss the configuration of the EMCN for the part of the
winding. Figure 6(a) is a partial view of the finite element
model for the winding, and Figure 6(b) shows the EMCN for
this part. In Figure 6(b), i, j, and k indicate the node posi-
tioning indexes corresponding to the radial, tangential, and
vertical directions to represent the node number, respectively.
In this figure, the red arrow indicates the direction of the
magnetic flux between the node (i, j, k) and the six adjacent
nodes. The magnetic flux between the two node (i, j, k) and
(i+1, j, k) on the straight line in the radial direction and the
circuit parameters that determine the flux are shown in
Figure 7, where the red arrow represents the direction of the
magnetic flux f. In this figure, u is the MSP or the mag-
netomotive force of a node, P is the permeance (reciprocal of
the magnetic resistance), and W is the magnetomotive force
in the winding current. The radial magnetic flux between the
two nodes (i, j, k) and (i+1, j, k) shown in Figure 7 can be
calculated using the following equation (Sim et al., 2018)


fri,j,k ¼ ui,j,k  uiþ1,j,k þ Wi,j,k
r
 Pi,j,k
r
, (1)
where the superscript r represents the radial direction.
Subsequently, we represented the constructed 3D EMCN
as equations in a discretized form and then converted them
into a matrix-vector form to obtain the MSP. When the
Lee et al.
Figure 6. (a) Partial view of the magnetic finite element model for the winding and (b) equivalent magnetic circuit network.
Figure 7. Concept model of the equivalent magnetic circuit
between nodes (i, j, k) and (i+1, j, k) in the radial direction.
continuous condition for this magnetic flux is applied to the
node (i, j, k) illustrated in Figure 6(b), the sum of the
magnetic flux between that node and the six nodes adjacent
in the radial, tangential, and vertical directions can be
expressed as follows
fri,j,k þ fθi,j,k þ fzi,j,k  fri1,j,k  fθi,j1,k  fzi,j,k1 ¼ 0 (2)
When equation (2) is applied to all the nodes of the EMCN,
the equations corresponding to the total number of nodes N
can be obtained. Rearranging these equations with respect
to u, the following matrix-vector equation can be obtained
PU ¼ Q, (3)
where U is an N × 1 vector consisting of the unknown MSP
at each node, P is an N × N matrix containing the permeance
between each node, and Q is an N × 1 vector composed of
the values of the product of the permeance and the mag-
netomotive force.
Finally, the process of calculating the magnetic flux
density vector and the electromagnetic force density vector
from the flux will be described. As the magnetic flux is
expressed in terms of the MSP, permeance, and magneto-
motive force, as in equation (1), the magnetic flux in the
radial, tangential, and vertical directions can be obtained by
5
substituting the calculated MSP of all the nodes into the
equations for each direction. The electromagnetic force
density vector is obtained by the cross product of the current
density vector of the winding and the calculated magnetic
flux density vector according to the Lorentz force law. In
other words, the electromagnetic force density vector L at
node (i, j, k) can be obtained by
Li,j,k ¼ J × Bi,j,k , (4)
where J is the current density vector and B is the magnetic
flux density vector.
To calculate the electromagnetic force density vector
over time for the windings of the 32 transformers listed in
Table 1, the current and magnetomotive force, which are the
input values of the EMCN method established above, were
applied to each transformer. Alternating currents of 60 Hz
with a phase difference of 120° were applied to the A-, B-,
and C-phase windings. The low- and high-voltage windings
of each phase were provided currents in opposite directions,
and the time step of the current was set to 0.0002 s. The
magnetomotive force over time was entered into the EMCN
by multiplying the current corresponding to each time step
and the number of turns of the winding.
The radial components of the electromagnetic force
densities calculated on the surface of the high-voltage
winding of each transformer were compared and ana-
lyzed to investigate the characteristics of the electromag-
netic forces obtained from the three-phase winding of the 32
transformers. Figure 8 shows the electromagnetic force
densities in the radial direction calculated at the outer nodes
of the middle height of the A-, B-, and C-phase high-voltage
windings. In this figure, the blue dotted line, red solid line,
and green dotted line indicate the electromagnetic force
densities of the A-, B-, and C-phase windings, respectively.
As illustrated in Figure 8, because the electromagnetic force
distribution of the B-phase winding produces a greater force
than that of the A- and C-phase windings, the B-phase
winding generates larger vibrations than the other windings.
6 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)

Figure 8. Electromagnetic force densities for the variation of the winding angle.

Accordingly, only the vibration of the B-phase high-voltage

winding is analyzed in the following section, and the
transformer noise is estimated based on the magnitude of
this vibration later.

4. Estimation of the winding vibration

As discussed in the previous section, models for the vi-
bration analysis of B-phase high-voltage winding were
constructed because they can have a significant effect on the
load noise. In this study, the winding was simplified into
a cylinder-shaped solid homogenized with an isotropic
material. Based on the rule of mixtures (Hsieh and Tuan,
2005), the equivalent properties of the homogenized
winding can be calculated using the following equation
Eh ¼ αc Ec þ αp Ep þ αe Ee , (5)
vh ¼ αc vc þ αp vp þ αe ve , (6)
ρh ¼ αc ρc þ αp ρp þ αe ρe , (7)
where E, v, and ρ represent the Young’s modulus, Poisson’s
ratio, and density, respectively, and α is the ratio of the
volume of each material to the total volume. In addition,
subscripts h, c, p, and e denote the homogenized material,
copper, insulation paper, and enamel, respectively.
For the vibration analysis using the finite element
method, structural finite element models were constructed
for the windings of the 32 transformers represented in
Table 1. The discretized equations of motion for the con-
structed finite element model can be expressed in the fol-
lowing matrix-vector form
M€
d þ Kd ¼ F (8)
where the superposed dot is a derivative with respect to time,
M and K are the global mass and stiffness matrices, re-
spectively, d is an unknown global displacement vector, and F
is a global load vector. In equation (8), M and K are calculated
using the values of the equivalent properties obtained through
equations (5)–(7), and F is obtained from the electromagnetic
force density estimated in the previous section.
Figure 9. Dynamic response for the radial displacement calcu-
lated at the node with maximum displacement.
To calculate the dynamic response to equation (8), the
electromagnetic force density obtained at all the nodes of
the EMCN was applied to the elements of the structural
finite element model corresponding to the location of this
node. The force exerted on the finite element of the
structural model by the electromagnetic force density can be
distributed as a force corresponding to the node of each
element using interpolation functions called shape func-
tions. The local load vector f e for an element assembled to
the global load vector F can be expressed as an integral form
of the element volume as follows
Z
f e ¼ NT DdV , (9)
Ve
where N is the 3 × 60 shape function matrix, D is the 3 × 1
electromagnetic force density vector, and Ve is the volume
of the element. D is determined by the electromagnetic force
density at the position corresponding to the central co-
ordinate of the element, which is calculated from the
analysis results of the EMCN mentioned above.
5. Validation of the model
The proposed model was validated by comparing the load
noise levels computed by the model with the noise levels
Lee et al.
Figure 10. Deformed shape for the B-phase winding of transformer T1: (a) isometric view and (b) x-z plane view.
Figure 11. Computed winding vibrations versus the measured
load noise levels.
measured by experiments. The dynamic response to the
radial displacement of the winding due to the electro-
magnetic force was calculated for the 32 transformers listed
in Table 1. Figure 9 shows the dynamic response to the
radial displacement calculated at the node where the
maximum displacement occurs in the winding of trans-
former T1. The trend of the time response calculated for all
the transformer windings is similar. As shown in Figure 9,
the winding has a constant period and always vibrates in
a positive radial direction. In addition, as illustrated in this
figure, the winding vibrates with a frequency component of
120 Hz because it oscillates in 6 cycles every 0.05 s. This is
because, as mentioned in Ertl and Voss (2014), the elec-
tromagnetic forces have frequency components that are
twice the power frequency of 60 Hz.
The displacement of the B-phase winding calculated at the
time corresponding to the first peak of the time response in
Figure 9 is illustrated in Figure 10 to analyze the overall
deformed shape of the winding. Figures 10(a) and (b) show
the deformed shape of the winding in the isometric view and
the x-z plane view, respectively. From these two figures, it can
7
be observed that the mid-height part of the winding vibrates
in convex form and that the maximum deformation occurs in
the central part of the winding. This maximum deformation
position adjacent to the A- and C-phase windings results
from the maximum electromagnetic force generated near
these two windings as discussed in the results of Figure 8.
The relationship between the magnitude of the winding
vibrations calculated for the 32 transformers using the finite
element method and the measured transformer noises was
compared. Figure 11 shows the load noises measured earlier
and the RMS values of the acceleration obtained at all the
nodes of the windings when the maximum current was
applied to the B-phase windings. In this figure, the circular
symbol represents the calculated vibration magnitudes and
the measured noise levels, and the solid red line represents
the regression curve for the data expressed by the circular
symbol. The R2 of the regression curve illustrated in
Figure 11 is 0.91, which shows only a small difference of
0.01 from that of Figure 4, and the RMSE is 2.42 dBA,
showing only a difference of 0.23 dBA from that of
Figure 4. In other words, the regression curves in Figures 4
and 11 have very close values of R2 and RMSE. Therefore,
the vibration magnitude of the transformer winding cal-
culated from the finite element analysis can be used to
predict the transformer noise.
6. Prediction of load noise
First, we analyzed how the distance between the tank and
the winding affects the amount of vibration transmitted
from the windings to the tank. This study established
a prediction equation for load noise by correcting the
calculated winding vibration by the length of the transfer
path. The reciprocal of the distance between the winding
surface and the tank wall was multiplied by the winding
vibration so that the influence of the transfer path length
could be reflected in the prediction equation, and the
equation is expressed as a function of the logarithmic form
for the corrected vibration
8 Journal of Vibration and Control 0(0)
Figure 12. Load noise level versus the weighted vibration level.


c3
L ¼ log Ac1 Dc
n Df
2
þ c4 , (10)
where L is the load noise level in dBA, A is the RMS value
of acceleration calculated at all the nodes when the max-
imum current is applied to the B-phase winding, Dn denotes
the distance from the winding surface to the closest tank
wall, and Df represents the distance from the winding
surface to the farthest tank wall. In addition, the coefficients
c1, c2, c3, and c4 shown in equation (10) are positive
constants, whose values were determined to minimize the
standard deviation of the difference between the measured
values and the predicted values using equation (10) for the
32 transformers shown in Table 1 using the generalized
reduced gradient method (Sharma and Glemmestad, 2013).
The R2 and RMSE of the proposed prediction equation
were evaluated to determine the accuracy of the calculation
results of the load noise using the equation. After defining
the weighted vibration level of the winding as
c3
Vw ¼ Ac1 Dc n Df
2
in the first term on the right in equation
(10), the weighted vibration levels and the load noise levels
for the 32 transformers shown in Table 1 are plotted in
Figure 12. In this figure, the circular symbol indicates the
values for each transformer, and the red solid line is the
curve corresponding to equation (10). The R2 and RMSE of
the predicted equation using the weighted vibration level
illustrated in Figure 12 are 0.94 and 1.94 dBA, respectively.
Compared with the regression equation shown in Figure 11,
R2 is increased by 0.03, and RMSE is reduced by 0.48 dBA.
In conclusion, the prediction using the weighted vibration
level of the winding (Figure 12) is more accurate than the
prediction using only the winding vibration (Figure 11).
The results predicted using equation (10) were compared
with those predicted using the previous equation presented
by IEC 60076-10 (IEC, 2016) to verify the proposed
prediction equation. The equation of IEC 60076-10 (IEC,
2016), which predicts the acoustic power according to the
rated power of the transformer, is expressed as follows
Figure 13. Differences between the predicted and measured
load noises for the transformers listed in Table 1.
L ¼ 44 þ 18 logðR=R0 Þ, (11)
where R is the rated power in MVA and R0 is the reference
rated power of 1 MVA. The differences between the pre-
dicted and measured load noises for the 32 transformers
listed in Table 1 are shown in Figure 13, where the red
circular symbol is for the equation of IEC 60076-10 (IEC,
2016) (i.e., equation (11)), and the blue circular symbol
represents the equation (i.e., equation (10)) proposed in this
article. In this figure, the abscissa represents the model
number of the transformer, and the ordinate indicates the
difference between the predicted and measured load noises.
The vertical bars in Figure 13 are the error bars, the sizes of
which represent twice the standard deviations of the
measured noises. As shown in the figure, the prediction
equation proposed in this article has a smaller difference
between the predicted and measured load noises than that of
IEC 60076-10 (IEC, 2016). Thus, the proposed equation
can predict load noise more accurately than the previous
comparable equation.
7. Conclusions
In this article, we proposed a new equation to predict the
load noise of three-phase oil-filled power transformers
considering the winding vibration. To this end, the load
noise of the 32 transformers and the tank vibration were
measured and analyzed to determine that the load noise was
related to the tank vibration, which is linearly proportional
to the winding vibration. The electromagnetic finite element
analysis model for the B-phase winding was constructed to
calculate the electromagnetic force, and the acceleration of
each node was obtained by imposing the calculated elec-
tromagnetic force on the structural finite element analysis
model. The RMS values of these accelerations were
substituted for the prediction equation proposed in this
article to predict the load noise of the transformer. It was
proved by comparing the predicted load noise with the
 Lee et al.
experimentally measured load noise that the proposed
prediction equation was more accurate than the previous
prediction equation.
Acknowledgment
We would like to acknowledge support provided by Hyosung
Heavy Industries.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with re-
spect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, au-
thorship, and/or publication of this article.
ORCID iD
Jintai Chung  https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7143-1321
References
Al-Abadi A (2019) Developing an accurate load noise formula for
power transformers. 2019 6th international advanced research
workshop on transformers (ARWtr), Cordoba, Spain, 7–9
October 2019, pp. 19–24.
Ertl M and Voss S (2014) The role of load harmonics in audible
noise of electrical transformers. Journal of Sound and Vibra-
tion 333(8): 2253–2270.
Geuzaine C and Remacle JF (2009) Gmsh: a 3-D finite element
mesh generator with built-in pre- and post-processing facilities.
International Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering
79(11): 1309–1331.
Girgis RS, Bernesjö MS, Thomas S, et al. (2011) Development of
ultra-low transformer noise technology. IEEE Transactions on
Power Delivery 26(1): 220–226.
Hsieh CL and Tuan WH (2005) Elastic properties of ceramic–
metal particulate composites. Materials Science and Engi-
neering: A 393(1–2): 133–139.
Hsu CH, Huang YM, Hsieh MF, et al. (2017) Transformer sound
level caused by core magnetostriction and winding stress
displacement variation. AIP Advances 7(5): 056681.
Hu JZ, Liu DC, Liao QF, et al. (2016) Electromagnetic vibration
noise analysis of transformer windings and core. IET Electric
Power Applications 10(4): 251–257.
IEC (2016) Power Transformers - Part 10: Determination of Sound
Levels. Geneva: International Electrotechnical Commission.
View publication stats
9
Jin M and Pan J (2016) Vibration transmission from internal
structures to the tank of an oil-filled power transformer. Applied
Acoustics 113: 1–6.
Kulkarni SV and Khaparde SA (2013) Transformer Engineering -
Design, Technology, and Diagnostics. 2nd ed. Boca Raton:
CRC Press.
Mizokami M and Kurosaki Y (2015) Noise variation by com-
pressive stress on the model core of power transformers.
Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials 381: 208–214.
Mizokami M and Kurosaki Y (2016) Variation of noise and
magnetostriction associated with joint types of transformer
core. Electrical Engineering in Japan 194(2): 1–8.
Moses AJ (1974) Measurement of magnetostriction and vibration
with regard to transformer noise. IEEE Transactions on
Magnetics 10(2): 154–156.
Moses AJ, Anderson PI and Phophongviwat T (2016) Localized
surface vibration and acoustic noise emitted from laboratory-
scale transformer cores assembled from grain-oriented elec-
trical steel. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics 52(10): 7100615.
Ploetner C and Almeida E (2020) Load sound power levels for
specification purposes of three-phase 50 Hz and 60 Hz liquid-filled
power transformers. CIGRE Working Group Report WG A2 54.
Rausch M, Kaltenbacher M, Landes H, et al. (2002) Combination
of finite and boundary element methods in investigation and
prediction of load-controlled noise of power transformers.
Journal of Sound and Vibration 250(2): 323–338.
Reiplinger E (1980) Assessment of grain-oriented transformer
sheets with respect to transformer noise. Journal of Magnetism
and Magnetic Materials 21(3): 257–261.
Sharma R and Glemmestad B (2013) On Generalized Reduced
Gradient method with multi-start and self-optimizing control
structure for gas lift allocation optimization. Journal of Process
Control 23(8): 1129–1140.
Sim JH, Ahn DG, Kim DY, et al. (2018) Three-dimensional
equivalent magnetic circuit network method for precise and
fast analysis of PM-assisted claw-pole synchronous motor.
IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications 54(1): 160–171.
Snell D (2008) Measurement of noise associated with model
transformer cores. Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Ma-
terials 320(20): e535–e538.
Tanzer T, Pregartner H, Riedenbauer M, et al. (2018) Magneto-
striction of electrical steel and its relation to the no-load noise of
power transformers. IEEE Transactions on Industry Applica-
tions 54(5): 4306–4314.
Valkovic Z (1994) Effect of electrical steel grade on transformer
core audible noise. Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Ma-
terials 133(1–3): 607–609.
Weiser B, Pfützner H and Anger J (2000) Relevance of magne-
tostriction and forces for the generation of audible noise of
transformer cores. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics 36(5):
3759–3777.