Induction heating technology is nowadays the heating technology of choice in many industrial, domestic, and medical applications due to its advantages regarding efficiency, fast heating, safety, cleanness, and accurate control. Advances in key technologies, i.e. power electronics, control techniques, and magnetic component design, have allowed the development of highly reliable and cost-effective systems, making this technology readily available and ubiquitous. This paper reviews induction heating technology summarizing the main milestones in its development, and analyzing the current state-of-art of induction heating systems in industrial, domestic and medical applications, paying special attention to the key enabling technologies involved. Finally, an overview of future research trends and challenges is given, highlighting the promising future of induction heating technology. Index terms-Induction heating, resonant power conversion, electromagnetic analysis.

The aim of this paper is to present a method for modeling the lifespan of insulation materials in a partial discharge regime. Based on the design of experiments, it has many advantages: it reduces the number of time-consuming experiments, increases the accuracy of the results and allows lifespan modeling under various stress conditions including coupling effects between the factors. Accelerated aging tests are carried out to determine the lifespan of these materials. The resulting model presents an original relationship between the logarithm of the insulation lifespan and that of electrically applied stress and an exponential form of the temperature. Results show that the most influential factors can be identified according to their effects on the insulation lifespan. Moreover, the lifespan model validity is tested either with additional points which have not been used for modeling or through statistical tests. Finally, it is shown that fractional plans are not suitable to r e d u c e t h e n u m b e r o f e x p e r i m e n t s. T h i s a p p l i c a t i o n o f t h e experimental design is best used during the initial phase, before the final drive has been built and any on-line diagnostic.