铁心柱的截面设计是电力变压器设计的一个重要环节。电力变压器铁心柱通常在圆形线圈内，为了充分利用线圈内圆形空间，铁心柱截面被设计成上下轴对称的多级阶梯。设计中，通过合理选择各阶梯矩形尺寸，力争使铁心柱截面几何面积最大。当圆形线圈的直径一定时，铁心柱级数愈多，截面积愈大，变压器的性能越好，但级数过多会造成硅钢片的规格繁杂，制造工时增加，因此需要综合考虑铁心柱的利用系数和制造工艺问题。设计大直径多级铁心柱的传统方法一般采用作图法，即在图纸上经过反复核算，画出较好的铁心截面积设计方案，来确定铁心直径，铁心直径确定后，铁心截面各级硅钠片宽度和叠厚的尺寸就根据设计手册唯一确定。由于没有科学精确的求解过程，这样会导致铁心柱的级数产生不必要的增加，增大电力变压器的成本，降低变压器的使用性能。因此，合理地选择电力变压器铁心柱截面的级数，确定各级的几何尺寸，是提高变压器性能和降低变压器成本的关键。随着计算机的应用及数学软件的发展，对这些实际问题进行抽象、简化，应用优化方法建立数学模型，并用计算机技术进行求解，提供了问题的解决方法。例如利用 MATLAB 优化软件开展规范化求解，就能得出铁心柱截面优化结果。
Section design of core column is an important part of power transformer design. In order to make full use of the circular space in the coil, the section of the core column of power transformer is designed to be an axisymmetric multi-step. In the design, the geometric size of the core column section is maximized by properly selecting the rectangular dimensions of the steps. When the diameter of circular coil is fixed, the more the series of core columns, the larger the cross-sectional area, and the better the performance of transformer. However, the excessive series will lead to complicated specifications of silicon steel sheets and increase the manufacturing time. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the utilization factor of core columns and the manufacturing process. The traditional method of designing large diameter multi-stage core column is drawing method, that is, after repeated calculation on the drawing, drawing out a better design scheme of core cross-section area to determine the core diameter. After the core diameter is determined, the width and thickness of sodium silicate sheets at all levels of core cross-section are determined solely according to the design manual. Because there is no scientific and accurate solution process, this will lead to an unnecessary increase in the number of core columns, increase the cost of power transformers, reduce the performance of transformers. Therefore, it is the key to improve the transformer performance and reduce the transformer cost to select the series of core column section and determine the geometric dimensions of each level reasonably. With the application of computer and the development of mathematical software, these practical problems are abstracted and simplified. Mathematical models are established by using optimization methods and solved by computer technology. The solutions to these problems are provided. For example, using MATLAB optimization software to carry out normalization solution, we can get the optimization results of core column section.