Boucherot Bridge based zero reactive power inductive power transfer topologies with a single phase transformer

High reliability and cost effectiveness of power electronics components has resulted in very high interest in inductive power transfer techniques among academic and industrial professionals. Since the major interest is directed towards automotive industry for battery charging, a special transformer with a large gap and relatively large leakage inductance is used. In order to achieve desired voltage levels high frequencies in the order of 20 to 100 kHz are preferred, producing high levels of reactive power which if not compensated limits power and efficiency. Thus, there is a need to tune or compensate the significant inductance of the windings. There are four basic transformer tuning topologies reported in literature, each one being a combination of series and/or parallel. This paper presents all four topologies and associated input to output dependences based on a Boucherot Bridge model of a transformer.