Novel Core Structure and Iron‐Loss Modeling for Contactless Power Transfer System of Electric Vehicle

A contactless power transfer system for electric vehicles must have high efficiency, a large air gap, good tolerance to misalignment in the lateral direction, compactness, and light weight. In this paper, a new 1.5‐kW transformer has been developed using a novel H‐shaped core which is more efficient, more robust to misalignment, and lighter than previous rectangular cores, to satisfy these criteria, and its characteristics are described. An efficiency of 95% was achieved across a 70‐mm mechanical gap. Iron‐loss modeling of the equivalent circuit is also presented. The calculated efficiency using this model shows good agreement with experimental results. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 184(2): 61–70, 2013; Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI 10.1002/eej.22377