A Strong Misalignmentt Tolerance Magnetic Coupler for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Wireless Power Transfer System

Wireless power transfer (WPT) has been widely utilized in mobile phones and electric vehicles because of its convenience. Once WPT can be applied to the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), the cruise time and concealment of AUV will be greatly improved. However, the AUV are easily affected by the tidal currents when they are charged wirelessly, resulting in misalignment and low transmission efficiency. For this reason, a strong misalignment tolerance magnetic coupler is designed in this paper through finite element analysis (FEA). A 600W prototype was built in the laboratory and its experimental results validated the theoretical analysis and strong misalignment tolerance. The output power and efficiency can reach 600W and SO% respectively with rotational misalignment of 7° and axial misalignment of 28mm.