Nowadays, induction cooking is becoming a viable alternative to conventional cooking in the food and catering industry. It is more efficient than cooking with heating filaments, and at least 3 times more efficient than that of gas heating. It also provides a quiet, safe and low radiation cooking environment. However, the traditional single coil induction cooker generally suffers from the problems of localized thermal distribution and the resulting fast “aging” of the induction pan [1]. The geometry and the excitation of the induction coils fundamentally determine the heating area and thermal distribution of an induction cooker. Whilst replacing a single coil with smaller multiple coils could improve the distribution of magnetic field as well as the heat pattern of the induction cooker, there are further complications arising from the magnetic interference and electric insulation among the coils. Thus, comprehensive analyses on the magnetic and thermal fields are crucial for the optimized design of induction cookers with multi-coils.
