Roadway-Embedded Transmitters and Multi-Pad Receivers for High Power Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer considerable economic and environmental benefits to society. Despite the decreasing vehicle costs and increasing range of newer EVs, the problem of range anxiety still exists. Range anxiety, at its core, is an issue of charging speeds rather than a concern about the driving range. Dynamic wireless charging of EVs is seen as a potential solution to this issue of range anxiety. Further, wireless charging technology also helps the push towards level 5 autonomy and opens new opportunities for how an EV can be utilized. Dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) systems typically require a high initial investment due to the scale of deployment needed and require a certain level of EV adoption before they become economically viable. The challenges facing DWPT technologies are broadly categorized into development, deployment and operation challenges. To address the deployment challenges, this dissertation presents the pavement integration of DWPT systems, and the design and validation of concrete-embedded wireless charging pads. To improve infrastructure utilization and address the operation challenge, different vehicle classes need to recharge from the same charging infrastructure. This is made possible by the use of multi-pad receivers, which allow different vehicle classes to receive different power levels using the same charging infrastructure. This work presents a scaled-down version of a multi-pad receiver system to demonstrate the operation and scalability of these modular receivers. To help further reduce the cost of development and implementation of DWPT systems, finite element method (FEM) and circuit simulation models are presented. The time-domain simulations can be used to develop and validate various control and communication schemes without the need for expensive hardware implementation. Finally, leakage magnetic field reduction to ensure safety and compliance for DWPT systems is discussed, and an example system is analyzed using FEM simulations