Analysis of a three-coil contactless power transfer system for high-power applications

Abstract

ABSTRACTRecently, contactless power transfer (CPT) has become very popular in various fields of applications such as electronic appliances, medical implant devices, electrical vehicles, etc. When air gap distance between the transmitting and receiving coils of a CPT system increases, coupling coefficient between the coils decreases. In a large-air-gap CPT system, by incorporating an additional coil between the transmitting and receiving coils, coupling coefficient can be enhanced. Consequently, efficiency of a large-air-gap CPT system is improved. In this study, a three-coil system has been compared with a two-coil system using basic circuit models. Thereafter, the basic circuit models of two-coil and three-coil systems have been studied to confirm energy efficiency differences between the two systems for high-power applications. Using simplified circuit models, conditions for higher energy efficiency of a three-coil system than a two-coil system have been derived and it has been established that power transfer efficiency of a three-coil system has improved significantly in comparison with a traditional two-coil system. To confirm the theory, a two-coil and a three-coil systems with an air gap distance of 18 cm and a lateral misalignment of 3.5 cm have been verified using Ansys simulation tool for an output power of 2 kW.