Design and Implementation of a Fixed-frequency Inductive Power Transfer System

Inductive power transfer (IPT) technology has gained immense interest for battery charging applications. IPT proves to be particularly efficient and suitable for high-power applications (≈1-20kW). This makes IPT an effective alternative for charging large batteries of electric vehicles (EVs), especially large electric transit vehicles, such as trains, trams, and buses. Because of the trend that this technology is having, it is important to understand the general characteristics and its applications. Nowadays, it is not a secret that IPT technology is and will continue revolutionizing the industry and our society. The future vision is to change the way electricity has been observed since its discovery: through wires. The main objective of this thesis is to study in details the fundamentals of IPT technology and analyze two principal stages of the system: the power supply and the resonant circuit, in order to design an IPT system using effective techniques, which will improve its performance. Additionally, the thesis helps identify and suggest a design procedure that can benefit and motivate future work on this technology. Moreover, the thesis presents a prototype setup that was built in the laboratory, in order to validate the theoretical analysis and simulation results. The thesis is structured into four main parts; the first part reviews the concepts of IPT systems, the different topologies, the explanation of important design considerations, and finally, presents initial simulation results. The second part explains the characteristics of the power supply in IPT systems, the control techniques to regulate the power flow, the explanation of a proposed control strategy, and the simulation results. The third part presents the experimental test setup and related results. Finally, the fourth part presents the conclusions and suggested future work