An inductive power transfer through metal object

The principle of Inductive Power Transfer (IPT)is very old but it is rarely used for transferring power from source to load via a conductive medium. This is because normally the medium restricts the power transfer due to losses or the shielding effects. However, for low energy applications, an acceptable amount of power could be transferred from the source to the load and it will be of great benefit to oil and gas as well as manufacturing industries to explore. This paper aims at finding the amount of power transferred, the losses and efficiency for a given configuration (metallic pipe) using an analytical model involving equations governing the mechanism of IPT and experimental validation of the derived analytical model. The maximum efficiency of the system for a stainless steel pipe at frequencies of 40Hz to 100Hz is obtained from experimental validation when the load at the output is about 5.55Ω. © 2013 IEEE