Design and implementation of contactless power track system with Y‐shaped inductive pickup

Abstract

This study investigated an inductive power transfer technique to construct a new inductive pickup for contactless power track systems. Several three-phase symmetrical shapes of the core material were simulated for the inductive pickup. The process to design the proposed pickup including a development of the core shape is discussed in this study. A feature of the proposed pickup is its three-phase symmetrical shape, which enables sharing the flux path and achieving low reluctance. To evaluate the coupling ability of the proposed pickup, a magnetic equivalent circuit with air gap was established. The finite element method and experiments on the contactless power track prototype were analysed to validate the proposed inductive pickup and its magnetic equivalent circuit. A complete Y-shaped inductive pickup was implemented and tested on a 1.2 kW laboratory-scale prototype. Fundamental experiments were carried out, and the overall system efficiency and pickup performance were subsequently demonstrated to verify the feasibility and capability of the proposed contactless power track system.