Performance assessment of inductive power transfer for railway applications

Inductive power transfer (IPT) is used to transfer the power over relatively large air gap using the resonant phenomena. The use of IPT in the railway transportations enhances the system performance in terms of reducing the on board energy requirements, minimizing the visual pollution, and reducing the infrastructure. The main challenge in IPT is to transfer efficiently the power from the primary coil in the track to the secondary coil on the vehicles through the air. The presence of the air gap in the system will cause the efficiency to decrease. In this paper, the performance of IPT for railway applications is assessed. The presented concept is validated through analysis and practical implementation. The practical implementation has been conducted at a rated voltage of 100V DC at 50kHz and input power of 80W. The maximum achieved efficiency is 87% at 1cm air gap for the loosely coupled IPT.