Christophe Auvigne

About tuning capacitors in inductive coupled power transfer systems

Inductive Coupled Power Transfer (ICPT) is a widely used technique to transfer electrical power from a power supply to one or more load(s) without any physical link. Even with large airgaps between primary and secondary coils, a very high power transfer efficiency can be reached if the reactive energy stored in the coils is compensated. Several compensation strategies could be used depending on the application. In this paper, the classical compensation is compared to new control-oriented one. A 200W prototype has been realised in order to validate the models developed.

Design of a resonant power inverter for a piezoelectric actuator

The power stage of a resonant piezoelectric actuators is difficult to design due to the high static capacitance of the actuator. It creates a lot of reactive power to compensate and can cause stability issues. This work presents a design of a resonant current inverter to drive actuators with a sine excitation biased with a DC offset with voltages and frequency in the range of 300 Vpk and 40 kHz.

Design considerations for a contactless battery charger

Contactless power transfer using inductive coupling is a well-known way to transfer energy from a transmitter to a receiver without any physical link. The applications are multiple. In this paper, the design and control of such a system for a contactless battery charger is investigated. The behaviour of the battery turns the system into a non-linear one. A solution dealing with the compensation topologies which aims to simplify the control of the transformer without any additional power electronics is proposed.

Optimal design of inductive coupled power transfer systems with applications to electric cars

This paper presents the multi-objective optimisation of an Inductive Coupled Power Transfer (ICPT) device. A setup as complicated as the one at hand in this paper is extremely hard to model analytically. To acquire some knowledge about the influence of the geometric factors, a sensitivity analysis is first performed using design of experiment (DoE) and finite-element modelling (FEM). It allows to validate that the choice of the free factors is relevant. This being done, the optimisation itself is performed using a genetic algorithm (GA), with two objectives and a strict functioning constraint.

A Novel winding topology applied for a self-shielding induction cooker

In this paper, the magnetic coupling between an induction cooker and a metallic pot is studied for various winding topologies. Effects of the winding orientation on the power transfer capability and on the emitted magnetic field under the cooker are discussed and compared. A novel topology inspired by permanent magnet Halbach array is proposed. This consists in coupling in both horizontal and vertical directions and to create an asymmetric field in order to reduce the emission under the cooker.