Design of a zero-voltage-switching large-air-gap wireless charger with low electrical stress for Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Abstract

This paper proposes a design and development of a wireless power transfer system to charge the battery in the Plugin Hybrid Electric Vehicles. A Parallel-Parallel topology is adopted to realize 15 cm-distance power transfer using resonance theory. Finite Element Method is used to extract the coil parameters. The advantages of the proposed design compared to the previous similar research are 1) low operational frequency (42 kHz) to avoid the electromagnetic interference to on-board automotive electronics equipment, and 2) low electrical stress to the semiconductor switches through using zero-voltage-switching technique. A 2 kW prototype to charge 200 V battery was built to experimentally verify the theoretical analysis. The overall system efficiency is ~86%.