Improving the Misalignment Tolerance of Wireless Power Transfer System for AUV with Solenoid-Dual Combined Planar Magnetic Coupler

In order to solve the problem of power transmission efficiency reduction resulting from misalignment in the Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) system for Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUVs), a novel coupling structure with strong tolerance to misalignment is proposed. A solenoid coil is selected as the transmitting coil, and the receiving coil is composed of dual combined planar coils. The WPT system can still maintain stable output under uncertain axial misalignments for AUVs. The magnetic field distribution of the proposed magnetic coupling structure is analyzed theoretically, and the distance between the coils in the dual combined planar receiving coil is optimized. The theoretical analysis shows that the proposed solenoid-dual combined planar coils coupling structure can effectively maintain a stable mutual inductance between the transmitting coil and receiving coil under different axial misalignments compared with solenoid-unipolar planar coil coupling structure. An S-S resonant compensated WPT experimental prototype is built to verify the output characteristics of the proposed magnetic coupling structure. Compared to the magnetic coupler with the unipolar planar coil, it is validated by experiment that the proposed magnetic coupler substantially enhances the stability of power transmission efficiency and output power when axial misalignment occurs. The power transmission efficiency decreases by 6.74% when axial misalignment increases from 0 to 40 mm in saltwater. Meanwhile, the variation of output power is less than 4.15%.