A Pareto-Based Comparison of Power Electronic Topologies for Inductive Power Transfer

Abstract:
This paper provides a simulative comparison of power electronic topologies for contactless inductive vehicle chargers. The investigated topologies comprise series and parallel reactive power compensation, as well as soft-switching and hard-switching topologies. Moreover, the impacts of a primary controller, a secondary controller, and a dual-side controller are examined. Each topology is holistically designed using a multi-objective optimization approach for exactly the same requirements: an output power of 3kW, an air gap ranging from 100mm to 170mm and a transformer diameter of 500 mm. Overall, it is demonstrated that the highest nominal efficiency per deployed material effort can be achieved using a dual-side power control, i.e., 94.9 %.