Investigation of HTS Coil Structure Robustness Against Misalignment Between Coils in a Wireless Power Transmission System for Railway Vehicles

A wireless power transmission (WPT) system using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils has been investigated. However, it is difficult to precisely match the positions of the primary and secondary coils. Thus, the HTS coil structure with high misalignment tolerance is required. In this paper, we investigated the non-circular HTS coil structure with a high quality factor for the WPT system, such as a rectangular coil and a racetrack coil. Also, we evaluated the power transmission characteristics of the WPT system using the non-circular HTS coils. As a result, the quality factor of the non-circular HTS coils was maximum when the radial gap between turns was almost the same as the HTS wire width, and increased with increasing coil length in a rail longitudinal direction. Also, the receiving power and the system efficiency using the non-circular HTS coils were more robust against misalignment between coils than those using the circular HTS coils. On the other hand, the receiving power decreased with increasing the coil length of the non-circular HTS coils in the rail longitudinal direction due to thermal radiation from normal temperature. From the above, the receiving power of the WPT system with small lateral misalignments can be improved by using the rectangular coils with a short coil length in the rail longitudinal direction in parallel. Moreover, the system efficiency of the WPT system with large lateral misalignments can be improved by using the rectangular coils or the racetrack coils with a long coil length in the rail longitudinal direction.

Automated summary

This paper investigates a wireless power transmission (WPT) system using high-temperature superconducting (HTS) coils. The non-circular HTS coil structure with high misalignment tolerance is found to have improved transmission characteristics. The power transmission efficiency and receiving power can be optimized by adjusting the spacing and length of the non-circular coils.