An Analysis of Misalignment Resilience and Interoperable Characteristics of the Segmented Bipolar Pad for Wireless EV Charging System

This paper proposes a novel magnetic coupler, a segmented bipolar pad (SBP) that outperforms the conventional bipolar pad (BP) with symmetrical geometrical dimensions. The performance parameters: mutual inductance (MTR), coupling coefficient (k), output power (PO), and DC-DC efficiency (η). The performance evaluation of the proposed pad is compared with the conventional pad under cases: (1) lateral misalignment (ΔY), and (2) interoperability with non-polarized pad (NPP) and polarized pad (PP). A 4.7 kW inductive power transfer (IPT) system is designed with an inductor–capacitor–capacitor-series (LCC-S) compensation network. For case 1, the MTR of the SBP at ΔY = ±90 mm is the same as the MTR of BP at ΔY = 0 mm, ensuring better misalignment tolerance capability of SBP. The maximum η of SBP is 93.64%, which is 4.96% greater than the highest η of BP. For case 2, the MTR of the SBP with NPP is 22–24% and with PP is 20–25% higher than the BP interoperable performance. The obtained η shows maximum improvement of 2.46% for SBP with NPP, and 3.7% for SBP with PP when compared to the interoperable results of BP. SBP gives enhanced performance for both cases compared to the conventional pad at no additional pad design cost. The proposed work is validated through an experimental setup.