Thermal management using a hybrid spiral/helical winding geometry for inductive charger

摘要

An inductive battery charging system (10) comprises a charge probe (16) and a charge port (22) and employs multi-turn spiral and helical windings (31a, 31b) in the charge probe (16) to provide improved thermal management of the power produced by the charging system (10). The thermal management provided by the multi-turn windings (31a) of the present invention improves the power handling capacity of the system and reduces AC proximity losses. Numerous flat helical and spiral transformer windings (31a, 31b) are disclosed that provide for differing thermal management schemes. The present invention may be used to increase the inductive charging capacity of electric vehicle propulsion batteries (25) to on the order of 120 KW. The present invention may be used with almost any transformer or inductor that uses foil windings.