Project abstract

Due to the urgent desire for a fast, convenient and efficient battery charging technology for electric vehicle (EV) users, extensive research has been conducted into the design of high power inductive power transfer (IPT) systems. This paper presents a comprehensive design guideline for highly efficient IPT systems and demonstrates it by a highly efficient 20 kW IPT system with the DC-DC efficiency of 97.2% at aligned condition and 94.1% at 150 mm lateral misalignment. This achievement is a leading power conversion efficiency metric when compared to EV charging method based on IPT systems disseminated in today’s literature. Herein, the performances of different compensation circuits are compared in terms of the maximum efficiency, voltage/current stresses and misalignment tolerance. To find the optimal design of the charging pads, a multi-objective optimization (MOO) method is proposed. Finally, a prototype with an area power density of 69.1 kW/m² is developed and the measured efficiency agrees with the anticipated value derived with the given analytical models. Link to the journal publication.