Wireless transmission of power using a PCB transformer with mobile secondary

Recently contactless inductive energy transmission for a large air gaps is an appealing area of research for different industrial applications. This paper investigates the influence of geometrical and electrical parameters of energy transmission through a large air gap. The energy transfer is realised by an air transformer. A new method for the determination of air transformer parameters is proposed. The transformer is used for energy transfer. It is fed by a half-bridge series resonant converter. The transformer primary and secondary wires are printed on a circuit board (PCB). The secondary wire has the possibility of moving with respect to the primary wire which remains fixed. The proposed method has been tested both in simulation and in experimental settings on a real world test bed designed in our laboratory. The obtained results highlight the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of power efficiency for a given air gaps distance.