Focus on Magnetics

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ISSUE: September 2013

How To Calculate Toroid Winding Length

by Dennis Feucht, Innovatia Laboratories, Cayo, Belize

The toroid or ring core shape has some significant advantages over round and square winding-window cores.
Toroids contain the magnetic field better, reducing radiated circuit noise. They also dissipate heat more
effectively. Yet if this article were set to music, a minor note would be struck about here, for when it comes to
winding toroids, the winding length must be determined beforehand. It takes some algebraic work to derive
winding length and the working equations will be given below. For the better engineers who do not like to use
equations without knowing where they came from, the outline of their derivation is also given.

How practical or useful are the following equations? Are they accurate to 20% or even 10% of the actual wire
lengths that will be required? In my experience, the accuracy of these equations is closer to 2%, and usually
better. But to account for this error, it’s advisable to add 2% to the calculated winding length, plus extra for
lead length.

The toroid geometric parameters needed for the wire-length calculation are

ri = inside radius = ID/2

h = toroid height and

w = toroid width = ro – ri, where ro is the outside radius or OD/2.

The wire parameters are

rcw = insulated wire radius and

N = number of turns.
With these parameters, we can calculate the following intermediate quantities.

ri
L = maximum (aligned) number of possible layers
2  rcw

where “aligned” means that the wire centers of each layer are aligned (colinear) with each other. Another
parameter that must be calculated is

N w  π  L2 = max (full-window) number of turns possible.

The NW term will then be used to calculate

Nw  N
M  L = number of layers.
π
The value calculated for M is usually not an integer, nor does it need to be. My custom is to store rcw in register
4 of my HP-15C calculator, L in register 1, Nw in 2 and M in 3.

With these intermediate values, the winding-length formula is the big equation:

M 4
l w  2  π  M  [(2  (h  w)  8  rcw  M )  ( L  )   rcw  (1  M 2 )]
2 3

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The approximated length is not degraded much in accuracy if the last term is dropped so that

M
lw  2  π  M  [(2  (h  w)  8  rcw  M )  ( L  )]
2
For sequential windings, begin the next winding with the geometric parameters offset by the previous winding;

w  w’ = w + 2·(M·2·rcw)

h  h’ = h + 2·(M·2·rcw)

ri  ri’ – M·2·rcw.

Turn-Length Derivation
Let M = the number of layers and m be the layer number, where m = 1, , M. Then the length of a turn is

turn length  lc (m)  2  (h  (2  m  1)  2  rcw )  2  ( w  (2  m  1)  2  rcw )

 2  (h  w)  8  rcw  (2  m  1) , m  1, , M

The turn length is measured at the center of the wire. For the first (inside) layer, m = 1, (2·m – 1) = 1, and the
wire adds rcw to h and w. At both top and bottom of the ring, rcw is added to h, for a total height of h + 2·rcw.
The turn has this height on both the inside and outside of the ring. In the width dimension, w + 2·rcw adds rcw
to both inside and outside. The turn length for the first layer is consequently

2·[(h + 2·rcw) + (w + 2·rcw)] = 2·(h + w) + 8·rcw

For the second layer, the wire-center height is the diameter of the first layer plus rcw to the center of the second
(outermost) layer, or 3·rcw. Then the turn length for m = 2 is

lc (2)  2  (h  w)  3  (8  rcw )  2  (h  w)  24  rcw

To find the winding length, in addition to the turn length as a function of layer, we also need the number of
turns as a function of layer, or

2  π  rm 2 π
N (m)    (ri  (2  m  1)  rcw )  2  π  ( L  (m  12 ))
2  rcw 2  rcw

For M layers,

M
 M  ( M  1) 
N (M )   2  π  (L 
m 1
1
2
 m)  2  π  ( L  12 )  M 
 2 


This simplifies to

N (M )  2  π  ( L  M  12  M 2 )  2  π  ( L  M2 )  M

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This expression for N can be interpreted as the

average turns per layer = 2  π  ( L  M2 )

times the number of layers, M.

The number of layers, M, has yet to be derived. It can be based on the difference between the number of turns
of a full winding window, Nw, and N. Nw is found by substituting M = L in the above equation for N(M);

N w  π  L2

Solving for L in Nw and substituting it into the formula above for N,

 Nw M 
N  2  π      M
 π 2 

and

Nw  N
M  L
π
This is sometimes easier to use with a calculator in the form

M N
 1 1
L Nw

The relationship between the fractional turns, N/Nw, in the window area to the fractional layers, M/L, is a
nonlinear function, plotted below in the figure.

Fig. Fractional turns (N/Nw) as a function of fractional layers, M/L.

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The winding fills with turns and approaches its maximum, Nw, at a greater rate than the layers approach the
maximum, L. As layers increase, fewer turns per layer are possible because ri effectively decreases as the
window fills with wire. In practice, it becomes harder to manually wind toroids as the window fills, and a
winding of small-sized wire is harder to thread through when wound last.

The turns can now be combined with the turn length to result in the winding length,

M
lw   N (m)  lc (m)
m 1

 2  π  M  [(2  (h  w)  8  rcw  M )  ( L  12  M )  43  rcw  (1  M 2 )]

Simplification of the algebra includes elimination of the summations over m by applying

M
M  ( M  1)
M
M  ( M  1)  (2  M  1)

m1
m
2
; m
m 1
2

6
.

The above formula for lw is a discrete-layer, piecewise-continuous function approximation of an abstract

continuous-layer function. The accuracy of lw improves whenever M >> 1.

In winding design, N is usually a given parameter. A toroid is chosen and the geometry is then also given. To
find the winding length, proceed to calculate in the following sequence, using the previously derived formulas:

ri  N 
L N w  π  L2 M  L  1  1 
2  rcw  N w 


lw  2  π  M  [(2  (h  w)  8  rcw  M )  ( L  12  M )  43  rcw  (1  M 2 )]

It is easy enough to write a computer math program to calculate the numerical values for these formulas. They
border in complexity between what is best relegated to a computer and what can be performed on a calculator.
On a programmable calculator, these formulas might best be calculated.

About The Author

Dennis Feucht has been involved in power electronics for 25 years, designing motor-
drives and power converters. He has an instrument background from Tektronix, where
he designed test and measurement equipment and did research in Tek Labs. He has
lately been doing current-loop converter modeling and converter optimization.

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