Pavement-Embedded Multi-MHz Capacitive Wireless Power Transfer Systems for Electric Vehicle Charging

This paper introduces novel approaches to integrating multi-MHz capacitive wireless power transfer (WPT) systems in pavements for electric vehicle charging. Some of the key challenges associated with integrating capacitive WPT systems in pavements are identified. These include a significant drop in power transfer when the charging pads of capacitive WPT systems are covered by common pavement materials such as concrete and asphalt. The paper presents and evaluates potential approaches to overcoming these challenges. One proposed approach is to strategically position the charging pads within the pavement. Another proposed approach incorporates cutouts in the pavement. The proposed approaches are validated through simulations and experiments. For experimental testing, a 6.78-MHz 12-cm gap 1-kW capacitive WPT system is designed and embedded in different concrete-based pavement test platforms. It is shown that a significant improvement in power transfer and efficiency is possible using the proposed pavement embedding approaches.