Analysis of the Contactless Power Transfer System Using Modeling and Analysis of the Contactless Transformer

In this paper, the electrical characteristics of the contactless transformer is presented using the conventional coupled inductor theory. Compared with the conventional transformer, the contactless transformer has a large airgap, long primary wire and multi-secondary wire. As such, the contactless transformer has a large leakage inductance, small magnetizing inductance and poor coupling coefficient. Therefore, large magnetizing currents flow through the entire primary system due to small magnetizing inductance, resulting in low overall system efficiency. In high power applications, the contactless transformer is so bulky and heavy that it needs to be split by some light and small transformers. So, the contactless transformer needs several small transformer modules that are connected in series or parallel to transfer the primary power to the secondary one. This paper shows the analysis and measurement results of each contactless transformer module and comparison results between the series- and parallel-connection of the contactless transformer. The results are verified on the simulation based on the theoretical analysis and the 30kW experimental prototype.