2372
2, FEBRUARY 2022
Litz Wire and Uninsulated Twisted Wire Assessment
Using a Multilevel PEEC Method
Jiahua Lyu , Hong Cai Chen , Member, IEEE, Yang Zhang , Yaping Du ,
and Qingsha S. Cheng , Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract—Litz wire (LW) is a common tool used in high-
frequency power electronic applications to reduce eddy loss. Unin-
sulated twisted wire (UTW) with lower manufacturing costs is often
ignored by both researchers and designers. LW and UTW have
similar geometry structures, however, there has been little research
on the performance evaluation of UTW so far. This article proposes
a novel calculation method of UTW based on the multilevel partial
element equivalent circuit method and the results are verified by
the experimental measurement. Then, the performance of LW and
UTW is compared and discussed under various conditions. The
simulation results show that LW and UTW have almost identical
performance and may replace each other for single-level wires. For
two-level wires, these two types of wires may be interchangeable
when the ratio of bundle radius to skin depth is less than a specific
value, otherwise, LW always has a better performance.
Index Terms—Litz wire (LW), partial element equivalent circuit
(PEEC), power losses, proximity effect, skin effect, uninsulated
twisted wire (UTW).
ABBREVIATION AND NOMENCLATURE
LW Litz wire.
UTW Uninsulated twisted wire.
rs Radius of strand.
rb Radius of the total wire bundles.
Nt Number of meshed cells in the segment.
Ns Number of strands.
Nb Number of bundles.
N Number of segments.
Manuscript received April 23, 2021; revised June 14, 2021; accepted August
7, 2021. Date of publication August 10, 2021; date of current version October
15, 2021. This work was supported in part by the Guangdong Basic and Applied
Basic Research Foundation under Grant 2019A1515110008, in part by the
National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62071211, and in
part the University Key Research Project of Guangdong Province under Grant
2018KZDXM063. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor K. Ngo.
(Corresponding authors: Hong Cai Chen; Yaping Du; Qingsha S. Cheng.)
Jiahua Lyu is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engi-
neering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055,
China, and also with the Department of Building Services Engineer-
ing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail:
jiahua.lyu@connect.polyu.hk).
Hong Cai Chen is with the School of Automation, Southeast University,
Nanjing 210096, China (e-mail: hc.chen@live.com).
Yang Zhang and Yaping Du are with the Department of Building Services
Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Kowloon, Hong Kong (e-mail:
16103271g@connect.polyu.hk; ya-ping.du@polyu.edu.hk).
Qingsha S. Cheng is with the Department of Electrical and Electronic En-
gineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055,
China (e-mail: chengqs@sustech.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more figures in this article are available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TPEL.2021.3103867.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TPEL.2021.3103867
0885-8993 © 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 37, NO.
p Length of wire pitch.
Zc Impedance matrix of cells.
Zp Impedance matrix of strands in a segment.
Zl Impedance matrix of the total wire.
Zt Impedance matrix after connection.
Zw Impedance of the wire.
δ Skin depth.
χ Pitch–radius radio.
ΔR Difference of resistance between LW and UTW.
I. INTRODUCTION
ITZ wire (LW) is widely used in power electronic appli-
L cations in the frequency range of dozens of kilohertz to
megahertz, such as electronic converters [1]–[4] and wireless
power transfer systems [5]–[7]. Compared with solid wire, LW
could reduce the eddy loss by twisting thin strands together [8],
[9]. However, the main disadvantage is its high cost. LW is
constructed with a thin insulating layer in each strand, which
requires a costly manufacturing process. With the operation
frequency of power electronics increasing from kilohertz to
megahertz, LW with smaller radius is required. Maintaining
a thin insulating layer while reducing the radius increases the
difficulty of manufacturing, therefore, makes high-frequency
LW more expensive [10]. In addition, due to its insulated strands,
LW should be soldered at a specific temperature at terminals to
facilitate the electrical connection. The soldering time varies
with the type of LW in a wider range. Extra time and cost are
required when using LW.
An alternate method to solve the above problems is to use
uninsulated twisted wire (UTW), which has a similar structure
to LW. UTW twists bare strands directly and no additional
process is required. Compared with LW, the cost of materials
and production is reduced due to the lack of an insulating layer.
The power electronics industry has been holding the belief that
LW performs better than UTW. However, Tang and Sullivan
[11] have proven that strand-level effects are not significantly
affected by the insulating layer, which means UTW has the
potential to replace LW under certain conditions. Since UTW
does not provide complicated insulating layers, using UTW can
greatly reduce manufacturing costs and save polyamide-imide.
Their work proves that the performance of UTW is better than
that of LW with only a few strands. However, Tang’s work
limits its investigation on single-level LW. He does not provide
the result on the common LW that have hundreds of strands.
LYU et al.: LITZ WIRE AND UNINSULATED TWISTED WIRE ASSESSMENT USING A MULTILEVEL PEEC METHOD
Meanwhile, his conclusion is based on analytical formulas that
require further validation.
Given that there is no study on a systematic comparison
of these two kinds of wires, it is necessary to evaluate their
performance and establish the right criteria for selection. The
performances of wires are usually expressed in ac loss, which
is mainly caused by skin and proximity effects [12]. Thus, the
calculation of ac resistance of both wires is an essential step.
However, to the authors’ knowledge, there is no efficient method
to calculate UTW.
Many methods have been developed to calculate the power
loss of LW. The analytical formula is the most common one,
which approximates the skin effect loss and the proximity loss
separately [13]–[17]. However, these formulas are limited to
simple LW structures and may be inaccurate due to insufficient
assumptions [18]. The finite-element method is another com-
monly adopted method that requires generating a fine mesh for
the entire space within the boundary, therefore, leads to huge
consumption of computer memory and computing time. The
partial element equivalent method (PEEC) is also applied to
model LW [19]–[21]. This method has the potential to achieve
a good calculation accuracy with a relatively low calculation
complexity. Recently, a 2.5-D PEEC [22] has been demonstrated
to have a high calculation performance. By adopting multilevel
techniques, the 2.5-D PEEC allows the simulation of an LW with
thousands of strands within acceptable computing time. How-
ever, all these methods are based on the assumption that strands
are insulated and in parallel connection. Therefore, these meth-
ods cannot be used to calculate UTW because the strands are in
contact with their neighboring strands. This article proposes an
efficient method based on 2.5-D PEEC to implement a solution
for both LW and UTW simulations. Then, we investigate LW
and UTW through simulations by sweeping related parameters
and summarize the simulation results.
The main contributions of this article are as follows. This arti-
cle, for the first time, proposes a simple but efficient calculation
method for UTW, yet with high accuracy. The method is formu-
lated based on the current distribution and circuit connection. It
has a clear physical meaning, which is convenient for analysis
and identifying the characteristics of LW and UTW. Based on
the proposed method, the characteristics of LW and UTW are
comprehensively investigated. Both single-level and two-level
wires are studied and compared. A parameter, the pitch–radius
ratio, is introduced to facilitate future discussion, which avoids
the effect of curvature change due to the change of the total
radius. The influence of twisting patterns of both LW and UTW
is discussed. The conclusion is helpful for selecting suitable
wires for power electronic designs.
The rest of the article is organized as follows. In Section II,
the geometric structure of twist wire is briefly introduced.
Section III presents the calculation framework of two wires
using the PEEC method. Section IV gives an experimental
validation of LW and UTW. The accuracy of the proposed
calculation method is demonstrated. The process of parameter
scanning and the detail of analysis and generalization are given
in Section V. In this section, how to give an in-depth study
of the characteristics of LW and UTW and a user guideline is
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2373
Fig. 1. Structure of twisted wire and its key parameters.
also given. Finally, the conclusion of the article is presented in
Section VI.
II. GEOMETRIC STRUCTURE OF TWISTED WIRE
Both LW and UTW are twisted wires, which are composed of
many strands through twisting. They share the same geometric
parameters, such as strand radius, bundle radius and pitch, and
the same geometric model could be used. The only difference
is that there is an insulating layer on the surface of individual
strands in LW, but not UTW. In other words, UTW is constructed
by twisting strands similar to LW, except that bare strands are
used. Thus, the strands in UTW touch each other and are short
connected.
The geometric structure of twisted wires with corresponding
parameters is illustrated in Fig. 1. Pitch is the wire length
required to complete a spiral cycle at one point on a wire. It
is represented by p. Pitch is divided into several segments in
the length direction for calculation. Segments are the smallest
unit of calculation and all strands in one segment are assumed
to be parallel. Strand is the smallest unit of twisted wire, and
the radius of each strand is represented by rs . A bundle consists
of multiple strands, and multiple bundles could form a larger
bundle. rbi is the bundle radius, and its subscript i indicates the
bundle level in a multilevel twisted wire. The calculation of rbi
is introduced in detail in [19].
In the wire design, both pitch and radius are key design
parameters. Radius could directly affect the resistance and small
changes in pitch would lead to a large change in the bundle level
proximity effect [15]. In [15] and [18], both pitch and radius
are treated as independent variables without considering the
change of the curvature of the entire wire. In order to facilitate
the effective discussion, a parameter of pitch–radius ratio χ is
introduced, which represents the curvature of strands in twisted
wire bundles as given by
pi
χi = (1)
rbi
where i indicates the bundle level in the multilevel twisted wire.
2374
Fig. 2. Effect under the different χ and the same χ.
Fig. 2 shows the twisted wire with different χ. It is obvious that
the curvature is proportional to the bundle radius and inversely
proportional to the pitch. Compared with using p as a single
variable, using χ could reduce the effect of curvature changes
when rs Ns, and Nb change. Therefore, χ is used in the following
discussion to limit the bundle level eddy effect caused by pitch,
which means pi always changes with rbi to keep χi constant.
III. IMPEDANCE CALCULATION OF LW AND UTW
The proposed method is an extension of the PEEC method
presented in [22]. The difference is that we achieve the calcula-
tion of UTW by a different circuit connection from that in [22].
The detail of the proposed method is presented in this section.
A. Multilevel PEEC Method
The PEEC method was derived from the mixed potential
integral form of the Maxwell equations. Taking advantage
of Green’s function, it could solve electromagnetic problems
through the equivalent circuit composed of partial elements,
including resistance, inductance, and capacitance [23], [24].
In the simulation, the capacitive displacement current between
strands and charge accumulation is a second-order effect [19].
Therefore, only resistance and partial inductance are required to
be considered. The multilevel PEEC method is used to calculate
the impedance matrix. The matrix is filled in by the results of
two parts of calculations: packing and twisting, where packing
represents the cross section of the wire and twisting represents
the extent of the wire [22]. As the composition of the matrix
shown in Fig. 3, packing calculates Zp once, which represents
resistance and inductance among strands in one segment and puts
it into the diagonal entries of the matrix. The twisting calculates
Mij , which represents the mutual inductance among different
segments for the upper triangular matrix and copies it to the
lower triangular.
In packing calculation, the wire is discretized on the cross
section using a novel annular mesh [22], [25], [26], which could
accurately simulate the eddy current effect (as  2 shown in
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 37, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2022
Fig. 3. Meshing of wires and corresponding impedance parameters using
PEEC method. (e.g., Ns = 3 and N= 2.)
Fig. 3). The cross section is meshed into Nt cells according
to the meshing scheme. The impedance matrix of cells Zc of
Nt × Nt is obtained as
⎡ ⎤
R1 +sL1 sM12 · · · sM1Nt
⎢ sM12T
R2 + sL2 · · · sM2Nt ⎥
⎢ ⎥
Zc = ⎢ . . . . ⎥ (2)
⎣ .. .. . . .. ⎦
T T
sM1N t
sM2N t
· · · RNt + sLNt
where R is the cell resistance, L is the self-inductance, and M is
the mutual inductance among cells, the subscript represents the
cell number.
Then, cells matrix (Zc ) is merged into strand matrix in one
segment (Zp ). A selection matrix A1 could be used to merge
cells into strands by using the relation
 −1
Z p = AT1 Z −1 c A1 (3)
where A1 is the selection matrix with a dimension of Nt × Ns ,
and aij (the entry in the ith row and the jth column of matrix
A) is equal to 1 when cell i belongs to strand j, otherwise aij is
equal to 0.
Twisting calculation is performed to find out the coupling
coefficients between strands in different segments in the length
direction (as  1 shown in Fig. 3). The mutual inductance cal-
culation assumes that the length of the segment is much longer
than the strand radius. Unlike the article presented in [22], the
approximation based on near and far field is not used here
because the difference between LW and UTW is negligible for
single-level wires, which are discussed in Section V. The small
error caused by far-field approximation may affect the conclu-
sion in the discussion. The mutual inductance Mij between the
strands in different segments could be then calculated according
to their location relationship, namely perpendicular, parallel, and
arbitrary, and their expressions are presented in the Appendix.
The total impedance matrix Zl with the dimensions of (Ns ×
N) × (Ns × N) can be constructed with Zp and Mij , as  4 shown
LYU et al.: LITZ WIRE AND UNINSULATED TWISTED WIRE ASSESSMENT USING A MULTILEVEL PEEC METHOD 2375

where N is the number of segments and Zt is an Ns × Ns matrix,

which represents the impedance matrix of Ns strands in parallel.
As all the segments have the same cross section, the
impedance matrix for packing only needs to be calculated once.
Finally, all strands are in parallel connection with each other, we
assume their terminal voltages are equal to u. The total current
it of these parallel strands is obtained as
Ns

it = in = Z −1
t ·u (6)
n=1

where in is the current in the nth strand. The impedance of LW

can be finally obtained as


Zw = 1 Z −1
t . (7)

2) Calculation Step for UTW: In the calculation of the

impedance for UTW, the first step is to connect the strands in
each segment in parallel. The total impedance matrix Zl could
Fig. 4. Calculation flowchart of LW and UTW. be merged into the N × N matrix Zt by selection matrix A2
1
Zt = (8)
AT2 Z −1
l A2
in Fig. 3
⎡ ⎤ where Zt is the impedance matrix, which represents the mutual
Zp jωM 12 · · · jωM 1N relationship among N segments, and A2 is the selection matrix,
⎢ jωM T12 Zp · · · jωM 2N ⎥
⎢ ⎥ which could be obtained by
Zl = ⎢ . .. .. .. ⎥. (4)
⎣ .. . . . ⎦
A2 = kron(eye(N ), ones(Ns , 1)) (9)
jωM T1N jωM T2N ··· Zp
where eye(N) is an identity matrix with a dimension of N × N,
B. Calculation of LW and UTW ones(Ns , 1) is a matrix with all ones with a dimension of Ns ×
1, and kron(m, n) is the Kronecker tensor product of m and n.
The calculation procedure in Section III-A is applied to obtain Then, all segments are connected in series and this connection
the impedance matrix of elements for both LW and UTW. After could be achieved by adding all elements in the impedance
obtaining the impedance matrix, the impedance of the wire is matrix
solved by considering the connection status of these elements,

as shown in Fig. 4. The strands are insulated along with LW Zw = Z t. (10)

and are connected in parallel at two terminals. This indicates
the segments are connected in series according to their topology IV. VERIFICATION OF THE PROPOSED MODEL
along the wire, and no parallel connection is provided among
Experimental measurements are used for verification of the
these strands, except at two far ends. However, strands in UTW
proposed calculation method in this section. LW and UTW as
are uninsulated, and are in parallel connection along the wire, or
well as coils made of them are constructed for verification. The
equivalently, in parallel connection in segments of infinitesimal
comparison of wires is used for the verification of skin and prox-
length. Such connections are difficult to model directly. To
imity effects caused by adjacent strands and bundles. Similar to
capture the behavior of UTW, as an approximation, we assume
other LW research articles [13], [20], [27], [28], coils are used
that strands are connected in parallel in every segment of a
to verify the calculation considering the external magnetic field.
small length for the entire wire. Utilizing this approximation,
In previous works [8], [29], the wire is investigated based on
UTW can be calculated in reverse order of that for LW, i.e.,
the assumption that the current in each strand of the wire is
merging strands first by considering parallel connection and then
equal to the current distribution, as shown in Fig. 5(a). Thus, the
merging segments by considering series connection. The details
ratio of strand radius rs to skin depth δ is applied to indicate the
of calculations for two types of wires are introduced separately
influence of the frequency and radius (as the x-axis). However,
in Section III-B1 and B2.
in practical use, the voltage source is applied to the terminal of
1) Calculation Step for LW: All segments in LW are in series
the wire and the voltage of each strand is equal. The current
connection, we can get the series resistance of all segments by
distribution in this situation is visualized in [15] and [18] and
adding all submatrix together
also shown in Fig. 5(b). The discussion is preferred in the bundle
N

N radius domain according to the current distribution. Therefore,
Zt = N · Zp + Mij (i = j) (5) the following discussion adopts the ratio of bundle radius rs to
i=1 j=1 skin depth δ (rb /δ) as the x-axis.

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2376 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 37, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2022

Fig. 5. Current distribution on the cross section of the wire under 1 MHz
using ANSYS. (a) Under equal current excitation. (b) Under parallel current
excitation.

TABLE I Fig. 6. Comparison of the calculation and the measurement of LW1 and
GEOMETRIC PARAMETERS OF WIRES (UNIT: MM) UTW1.

A. Wire Verification
The three pairs of LW/UTW of 20 m long, including single-
and two-level bundles, are evaluated. The parameters of the
measured wires are listed in Table I. All calculations and mea-
surements are carried out under a frequency range between
1 kHz and 1 MHz. All the results are measured by vector network
analyzer (Bode 100) and the numerical calculation is performed
with MATLAB on a workstation with Intel 2.3 GHz E5-2699
CPU and 256GB RAM.
Fig. 6 shows the measured results of single-level wires (LW1
and UTW1) as well as results obtained by the PEEC calculation.
The mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) is used as the
indicator for the accuracy of the calculation. The MAPE of
LW1 is 0.74% and that of UTW1 is 0.42%. The calculation
matches well with the measurement, which verifies the accuracy
of the calculation. The results of LW2 and UTW2 are shown
in Fig. 7. The results of PEEC calculation also fit well with
the measurement, where there is only a slight dispersion at 1
MHz for LW2. The MAPE of LW2 and UTW2 is 1.13% and
2.36%, respectively, which are both within a reasonable range.
Fig. 8shows the results of the third pair of wires, which have
a large number of bundles. The results also show the match
between the proposed method and the measurement. The MAPE
of LW3 is 3.23% and that of UTW3 is 2.9% where both are
also acceptable. Both measurements show that the proposed
calculation method has high accuracy and it is reliable to use
Fig. 7. Comparison of the calculation and the measurement of LW2 and
UTW2.
PEEC results for further analysis. By comparing the results of
LW1/UTW1, we find little difference between them. While, for
LW2/UTW2 and LW3/UTW3, dispersions between LW and
UTW are observed, especially for LW3/UTW3. It indicates
that a different twisting produces different levels of influences
for two types of wires. With comparison results and verified
accuracy, the proposed calculation method is applied to analyze
the resistance of both LW and UTW in Section V.
B. Coil Verification
Two coils made of LW2 and UTW2 are tested to verify the
accuracy of the proposed method when the external field is
considered. As the geometric structure shown in Fig. 9, each
of them has 20 turns with the inner and outer radius of 2.5 and
4.5 cm, respectively. Both two coils are calculated using the
proposed method with wires meshed into small segments.
The comparisons between the calculation and the measure-
ment of two coils are shown in Fig. 10. The MAPE of LW coil and
UTW coil are 2.14% and 2.69%, respectively. The calculation
matches well with the measurement which verifies the efficiency
of the proposed method on calculating external magnetic field.

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LYU et al.: LITZ WIRE AND UNINSULATED TWISTED WIRE ASSESSMENT USING A MULTILEVEL PEEC METHOD
Fig. 8. Comparison of the calculation and the measurement of LW3 and
UTW3.
Fig. 9. Photograph of tested coils (made of LW2 and UTW2) for experimental
verification. (Each wire has a silk insulation layer outside the wire.)
Fig. 10. Comparison of the calculation and the measurement of LW coil and
UTW coil.
V. DISCUSSION ON LW AND UTW USING PEEC
CALCULATION
Taking advantage of the convenience and the efficiency of the
proposed method, a comprehensive investigation into the wire
performance, which is represented by the resistance of LW and
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2377
TABLE II
WIRE TYPES AND CORRESPONDING RADIUS (UNIT: MM)
TABLE III
VARIABLES IN EACH DISCUSSION
UTW, is carried out. It has been known that the main factors
affecting wire performance are the strand radius rs , and the
number of strands Ns and Nb for the two-level wires. Pitch
p is also a factor that greatly affects the wire characteristic.
The pitch–radius ratio χ, which is defined before, is used for
discussion in this section.
To evaluate the performance, a criterion that represents the
difference between LW and UTW is defined as (11), which is
used under the assumption that the dc resistance of UTW and
LW is equal. When ΔR is positive, it means LW has a better
performance and on the contrary, UTW is better
RUTW − RLW
ΔR = (11)
RUTW
where RLW and RUTW are the resistances of LW and UTW,
respectively. The denominator RUTW is used to scale the differ-
ence between two wires.
The strand size is an important parameter that determines
the dc resistance and high-frequency performance. Thus, its
range should be set carefully. The configuration of wires in the
frequency range of 1 kHz–1 MHz has been recommended in
both the academy [16] and the industry [30]. Their types and
corresponding radius (rs ) are given in Table II. The investigation
is carried out using the wires in the table.
The discussion here is divided into two parts according to the
structure of wires, i.e., single-level wires and two-level wires.
The influence of wire parameters on the ΔR between two types
of wires is studied in detail. In order to reflect the constants and
variables intuitively, the parameters are listed in Table III. The
tick represents the parameter, which is used as a variable in the
corresponding simulation, and the values of variables are listed
in the legend of each figure. Other parameters are regarded as
constants and their value is given in the table. Then, p could be
easily calculated by rb and χ according to (1).
A. Single-Level Wires
For single-level wires, there are three parameters related to
the wire structure: strand radius rs , number of strands Ns , and
pitch p. These parameters might affect the wire performance at
2378
Fig. 11. Effect of changing χ through rs for single-level.
Fig. 12. Effect of changing χ through Ns for single-level wires.
different frequencies. As mentioned before, χ is a more reason-
able variable to show the influence. The following discussion is
evaluated based on χ.
The first situation [Section V-A1] adopts a changing χ by
changing rs and Ns while keeping p to be constant. In the second
situation [Section V-A2 and A3], χ is constant and it represents
that the wire curvature does not change with the bundle radius.
In this situation, p varies with rb and Ns according to (1) in sake
of keeping χ constant.
1) Effect of Pitch–Radius Ratio: Fig. 11 shows the sweeping
results of wires with 125 strands under different rs . p is set to be
20 mm and the range of strand radius is from 0.125 to 0.02 mm,
which means χ changes from 11.8 to 75.4. The results show that
the two wires begin to vary gradually when rb /δ is equal to 1,
which means the skin depth is equal to the total radius of the
bundle. And it could be seen that the maximum difference is
less than 1.2%.
Besides increasing the radius of strands, the other method to
adjust χ is to change Ns . The results obtained by sweeping Ns
are shown in Fig. 12. p is also set to be 20 mm and Ns changes
from 340 to 7, the corresponding χ changes from 20 to 165. The
trend of ΔR is similar to that, as shown in Fig. 11. The difference
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Fig. 13. Effect of changing rs for single-level wires when keep χ constant.
starts to appear when rb /δ is equal to 1 and wires with lower χ
have better performance.
However, a negligible difference is observed by changing
rb /δ in both cases. The normalized difference between the two
wires is also less than 1.2% as Fig. 12 shows, which could be
completely ignored. In actual manufacturing and application,
LW and UTW with different χ of the single-level can be approxi-
mately regarded as equal and could replace each other according
to cost or actual situation.
2) Effect of the Strand Radius rs : rs is a key parameter affect-
ing the wire performance, which takes the effects by influencing
the total bundle radius. In this part, Ns is equal to 125, χ is
equal to 30, and rs is also swept from 0.125 to 0.02 mm. As
Fig. 13 shows, the curve of ΔR decreases at the beginning, then
increases, and finally decreases. The oscillation amplitude is less
than 1.4% of the resistance of UTW, which could be completely
ignored in the design and application process. That is, LW and
UTW could be equivalently replaced in this case.
3) Effect of the Number of Strands Ns : Many publications
[31] have given a guide on how to choose optimal Ns to obtain
LW with the lowest resistance. The focus of this work is not on
the wire performance but the difference between LW and UTW.
According to the reasonable ratio of bundle radius to skin depth,
the value range of Ns is discretely selected between 7 and 340.
According to the design handbook [32], Ns for single-level is
mostly less than 200 and the purpose of selecting Ns to 340
is to track the trend of ΔR . rs is 0.05 mm (AWG38) and p
changes with Ns to satisfy χ = 30. It could be learned from
Fig. 14 that ΔR becomes obvious when rb /δ is larger than 1. But
the maximum value of ΔR shown in the figure is smaller than
1.2%. Therefore, these two wires could replace each other for
single-level wire no matter what Ns is.
It can be summarized for single-level wires that there have
small differences between LW and UTW (less than 2%) (see
Figs. 11–14). The reason for the small differences between
them is due to the thickness of the insulation layer of LW. The
insulation layer is 0.003 mm, as given in Table I, which is 0.75%
of the strand radius. Therefore, the total radius of LW is slightly
larger than that of UTW, and LW suffered more from the skin
LYU et al.: LITZ WIRE AND UNINSULATED TWISTED WIRE ASSESSMENT USING A MULTILEVEL PEEC METHOD
Fig. 14. Effect of changing Ns for single-level wires when keep χ constant.
Fig. 15. Effect of changing rs for two-level wires when keep χ constant.
effect at high frequencies. It will also cause UTW to always be
a little better than LW.
B. Two-Level Wires
Two-level wires are composed of multiple single-level wires,
which introduce a new parameter: the number of bundles Nb .
Due to the bundle level is not single, i is used to represent the
bundle level, e.g., pi and χi . In this part, the strand radius rs , the
number of strands in one bundle Ns , and the number of bundles
Nb are studied. These three parameters have an impact on rb , and
rb /δ is also used as the variable under a certain case to see the
change of ΔR as previously discussed. The effect of χ has been
discussed in Section V-A1. As this part focus on the influence
of bundle level effect, χ1 and χ2 are set to be constant. p1 and
p2 change with bundle radius to maintain constant pitch–radius
ratio: χ1 and χ2 are equal to 30.
1) Effect of the Strand Radius rs : The influence of rs is first
demonstrated by parameter sweeping where rs changes from
0.125 to 0.02 mm and rb /δ changes from 0 to 33. Ns and Nb
are regarded as constants and set to 25 and 5, respectively. The
results are shown in Fig. 15.
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2379
Fig. 16. Effect of changing Nb for two-level wires when keep χ constant. (The
total number of strands are Nb ×16: 128, 192, 256, 320, 384, 448, 512, and 576.)
It could be seen that a larger rs leads to a larger ΔR and
AWG30 has a significantly larger ΔR , compared with wires of
other sizes when rb /δ is equal. It reveals that ΔR increases the
strand radius. Meanwhile, ΔR is always larger than 0, which
indicates LW always has an equal/better performance in this
case. ΔR could reach up to 50% at high frequencies, which
indicates the ac resistance of UTW is twice as much as LW.
Therefore, for two-level wires with different rs , UTW and LW
could be replaced with each other only if rb /δ is less than 2. LW
is a better choice, especially for high-frequency applications.
2) Effect of the Number of Bundles Nb : To depict the relation-
ship between Nb and rb /δ, the number of strands in a single-level
wire Ns is assumed to be equal to 16 and AWG 40 wires are used.
Nb changes discretely from 8 to 36 with an interval of 4. The
result is shown in Fig. 16 and it reveals that ΔR increases with
rb /δ and Nb growing. The resistance of UTW can reach up to
four times that of LW. The measurement values of LW3 and
UTW3 (Nb = 20 and Ns = 16) are used to compare with the
simulation results (the green line). It should be noted that the
definition of ΔR in (11) would amplify the measurement error.
Thus, the measurement matches well with the changing trend
of ΔR although some points show slight deviation. It could be
found that there is no difference between LW and UTW when
rb /δ is less than 2 and it means these two kinds of wires could
replace each other at that range. LW is much better than UTW
when rb /δ is larger than 2.
3) Effect of the Number of Strands in Single-Level Wire Ns :
To compare the effects of Ns , the parameter setting for the
investigation of rb is set to be similar to the previous case. Nb
is set to 5 and AWG 40 wires are used to show the effect of Ns .
Ns changes from 16 to 100 with an interval of 12 to achieve a
wide range of sweeping. The measurement values of LW2 and
UTW2 (Nb = 5 and Ns = 16) are used to compare with the
simulation results (the pink line). Although the measurement
error is amplified, it is still in a reasonable range and could
reflect the trend of change. The results, as shown in Fig. 17,
show that the ΔR still increases with rb /δ when rb /δ is larger
2380 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON POWER ELECTRONICS, VOL. 37, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2022

Fig. 18. Geometric configuration for expression M .

Fig. 17. Effect of changing Ns for two-level wires when keep χ constant. (The
total number of strands are 5×Ns : 80, 140, 200, 260, 320, 380, 440, and 500.) perpendicular (M ), parallel(M|| ), and arbitrary (M ) [33]

M⊥ = 0
⎡ ⎛   ⎞  ⎤
than 2. Similar to the previous results, LW becomes better than 2  2
μ0 l ⎣ ⎝ l l d d
UTW when rb /δ is larger than 2. M = ln + + 1⎠ − 1+ + ⎦
2π d d l l

VI. CONCLUSION μ0 m
M∠ = cos θ (α + l) tanh−1
This article presents a new prospect of LW and UTW that LW 2π R1 + R2
could be replaced by UTW to save costs. An efficient calculation l m
method based on PEEC to calculate these two types of wire is + (β + m) tanh−1 − αtanh−1
R1 + R4 R3 + R4
proposed. The proposed method implements the calculation of 
−1 l μ0 Ωd
the two wires by simply changing circuit connection relations −βtanh −
among strands, which has an obvious physical meaning and R2 + R3 4π tan θ
higher computational efficiency. The method is verified through where l and m are the lengths of the segments, and other
the experimental measurement of three pairs of wires and a pair parameters are shown in Fig. 18.
of coils. Then, simulations are performed to show the differences
between LW and UTW under different parameters.
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2381
Jiahua Lyu received the B.S. degree in electrical
engineering from the Huazhong University of Science
and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2018, and the M.S.
degree in electronic engineering from the Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong,
in 2019. He is currently working toward the Ph.D
degree with the Department of Building Services
Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University,
Hong Kong.
His research interests include computational elec-
tromagnetics and wireless power transfer.
Hong Cai Chen (Member, IEEE) received the B.S.
degree in electronic science from the Hefei University
of Technology, Hefei, China, in 2012, and the Ph.D
degree in electrical engineering from the Hong Kong
Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, in 2018.
From February 2017 to August 2017, he was a
Visiting Scholar with the Duke University, Durham,
NC, USA. From July 2018 to June 2021, he was a
Research Assistant Professor with Academy for Ad-
vanced Interdisciplinary Studies, Southern University
of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China. He is
currently an Associate Professor with the School of Automation in South-
east University, Nanjing, China. His research interests include electromagnetic
compatibility, transient analysis, transformer diagnosis and intelligent fault
detection.
Yang Zhang received the B.S. degree in electrical
engineering from the Huazhong University of Sci-
ence and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 2011. He is
currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in elec-
trical engineering with The Hong Kong Polytechnic
University, Hong Kong.
His research interests include lightning protection,
power system, transformer diagnosis, etc.
Yaping Du received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from
Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in
1984 and 1987, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree
from the University of Southern California, Los An-
geles, CA, USA, in 1994, all in electrical engineering.
He is currently a Professor with the Department of
Building Services Engineering, the Hong Kong Poly-
technic University, Hong Kong. His research interests
include electromagnetic environments, lightning pro-
tection, and power quality in electric power systems,
electrified railway systems and buildings.
He is a member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, and a Chartered
Engineer of U.K.
Qingsha S. Cheng (Senior Member, IEEE) received
the B.Eng. and M.Eng. from Chongqing University,
Chongqing, China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively,
and the Ph.D. degree from McMaster University,
Hamilton, ON, Canada, in 2004.
In 1998, he joined the Department of Computer
Science and Technology, Peking University, Beijing,
China. In 1999, he joined the Department of Elec-
trical and Computer Engineering, McMaster Univer-
sity, where he worked as a Research Engineer. He
is currently an Assistant Professor with Department
of Electrical and Electric Engineering, Southern University of Science and
Technology, Shenzhen, China. His research interests include surrogate mod-
eling, CAD, modeling of microwave circuits, software design technology, and
methodologies for microwave CAD.