An Electrified Tramway Wireless Charging System for Rail Transportation Using Dynamic Capacitive Power Transfer With Four Vertical Plates

This article proposes a novel vertical dynamic capacitive power transfer (DCPT) system to enhance the power transfer of a rail transit charging system and improve the CPT performance. The present work suggests a novel CPT-based rail track infrastructure for dynamic charging with vertical plate arrangements consisting of four plates. The four aluminum plates were used to plan the coupling capacitances between the transmitter (ground side) and receiver (vehicle side) ends. To increase the mutual capacitance, a dielectric material was filled in the space between plates on the vehicle side, which also results in improved output power. Six coupling capacitances were formed between the plates, measured by ANSYS Maxwell simulation software. The circuit simplification method reduced the six coupling capacitances to four. The mutual capacitance and self-capacitance values were evaluated for positioning the plates at different distances, and then, the ideal capacitance was identified at 100 mm. The compensation circuit parameters were designed using dynamic circuit modeling, and its performance was evaluated in LTSPICE software. The hardware prototype is developed in the laboratory and operates at a 1-MHz frequency and the output power is obtained as 2.76 kW with a maximum efficiency of 92.6%.