Technology has revolutionised all aspects of human life at all consecutive intervals
and Fourth Industrial Revolution is no different. Daily transport and
energy industries not only shape the future of a country’s economy, but also
make the economy highly yielding due to recent advances. Electric vehicles
(EV) have been rapidly invading the market share during recent years. The
advancements in EV and enhanced market share demand EV charging, being
more reliant on either conventional plug-in charging or wireless charging.
Given the limitations within battery related apparatus such as escalating
battery costs, higher weight and lower power density, wireless power transfer
(WPT) is a novel state of the art technology in energising. WPT has remarkable
characteristics such as enhanced flexibility, mobility, convenience
and safety, indicating potential benefits, if it is adopted for EV with similar
efficiency; for example, it can eliminate the use of charging cables.
Despite the fact that the wireless charges for EV, have undergone significant
development phase during the last decade, many design limitations are
yet to be addressed. Although the technology has been commercially outgrown,
key limitations such as limited efficiency over distance, limited driving
range, vulnerability to misalignments, or positional offsets are yet to be
researched. Moreover, although high system efficiency can be attained, the
distance variations between the transmitter and receiver and the misalignments
will impact the system efficiency. This thesis addresses the aforementioned
limitations and design challenges of the magnetic resonance WPT system,
and proposes a novel transmitter and receiver circuit and coil designs,
to minimise the impact of distance variations and coil misplacement, reduce
the size and improve charging performance.
This thesis focusses on inductive wireless power transfer (IWPT) which
is also referred to as magnetic resonance and reviews and contrasts other
WPT mechanisms. Additionally, it presents a detailed mathematical analysis
of inductive wireless power circuit model to obtain accurate modelling parameters.
Two and four loop strongly coupled magnetic resonance (SCMR)
wireless power systems have been mathematically analysed and their performance
has been evaluated. A novel combined, conformal strongly coupled
magnetic resonance system (CSCMR) has been combined with SCMR, in order
to minimise the dimensions of the receiver and compensate the coupling
factor due to distance variations between the transmitter and receiver. In the
second phase, additional inductors were added to the existing loosely coupled
system to obtain higher efficiencies over higher distances. The size of the system has significantly reduced due to the additional smaller transmitter
and receiver inductor which were added to the existing system to achieve
better performance. The validity of each design has been discussed via a set
of simulations, and their measurements have been obtained via prototypes.
Finally, a smart WPT charging system, consisting of six transmitter loops
and a sensor network array, for an autonomous parking space was developed.
The proposed method reduces the energy required for determining a
car’s location, eventually increasing the performance of the charger