IPTVisual: Visualisation of the Spatial Energy Flows in Inductive Power Transfer Systems with Arbitrary Winding Shapes

Abstract

Mid-ranged wireless power transfer by induction or inductive power transfer (IPT), including the strong magnetic resonance method, has been widely adopted, in numerous applications where wires are restricted. The energy flow in space, of course, is invisible to engineers. The windings are often required to be irregular shapes to accommodate the industrial designs of the products, thus, a visualisation method for energy transfer paths could greatly help the design and optimization of such systems. A time-efficient methodology, including the model, analysis and plot of the three-dimensional energy flow for IPT systems, is proposed in this paper. Algorithms of fast describing arbitrarily shaped windings are proposed and the time complexities are evaluated. A software tool, IPTVisual, is developed. It takes the inputs of key coordinates of the windings, the assignments of voltage and/or current sources, any compensation capacitors and auxiliary circuits, and the required observation points to generate the 3D models of the windings and the Poynting vectors, rendered in web browsers for the most extendable compatibility. Several example scenarios have been tested and the results match with the expected operations.