Comparison of magnetic couplers for inductive electric vehicle charging using accurate numerical simulation and statistical methods

Inductive power transfer (IPT) systems developed rapidly in the last years. Nowadays, IPT systems are widely used in a variety of applications, such as automated guided vehicles, electric vehicles, or buses. Within this broad range of applications, IPT systems vary significantly in capacity, in their range of air gap, and in their maximum lateral displacement. In order to take these requirements of various car classifications and power classes into account, a comprehensive overview of various magnetic couplers is given in this paper. Moreover, their optimal field of application is identified. The comparison does not only include known geometries of magnetic coupler topologies, which are already current state of research, but also modifications of these geometries and further topologies. At first, specific strengths and weaknesses of the geometries are highlighted in terms of previously defined evaluation criteria. For this purpose, validated and verified numerical simulations are applied. Furthermore, variations of air gap and lateral misalignment are considered by correlation analyses. In the second part, the previously analyzed geometries are grouped by carrying out a cluster analysis. In the end, the optimal field of application for each group is identified.