Design Trade-Offs Between the Coupled Coils’ Inductance and the Series-Series Compensation Capacitance for EV Wireless Charging Systems

Abstract

Nowadays, inductive power transfer (IPT) with magnetic resonance is the most used method for high-power wireless battery charging applications. Once the topology of the compensation network and the operating frequency are selected, there are infinite combinations of the circuit equivalent inductance and compensation capacitance values resonating at that frequency. Choosing an appropriate ratio between these passive devices is essential to meet the target output power while ensuring that the required DC input and output voltages are found within the permitted range limited by the power source and the battery load. This paper proposes design trade-offs for selecting the optimum ratio between the inductance and capacitance in IPT systems with series-series compensation applicable to any power level. First, the target mutual inductance must be computed. Based on that, the coupled coils are designed depending on the physical constraints. An example is provided considering a 3.7 kW wireless charging system for electric vehicles (EVs) where different coils’ combinations are analyzed through the finite element method. The most suitable design is implemented, achieving or the application a relatively high measured peak DC-to-DC efficiency of about 96.24% at 3.28kW while the coils are aligned with 11cm distance. The required power is delivered at different battery voltages and coils’ alignments by regulating the DC input voltage.