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Abstract
Locomotives served humanity since their early origins. There were many different types of energy sources such as gas, coal, diesel, electricity, etc. Some energy sources were more environmentally friendly than others. The research focus was to advance the knowledge of the use of electricity as an energy source. The research investigates the wireless power transfer system at low voltage levels. The system was investigated at low voltage to understand the behavior of different coil types under different scenarios. A testing prototype was developed to perform the tests. There were three main coil types which were air coils, air coils with added cores, and E-core coils. Moreover, each coil type had two subcategories; the first one was the one transmitter to one receiver, and the second one was multiple transmitters to one receiver. There were several tests which include vertical separation or airgap test, horizontal separation test, and different load test. The tests were performed to observe the efficiency changes and maximum efficiency achievable. Also, simulations were performed using ANSYS Maxwell and Pspice to compare actual measurements to simulation results. The results were as expected. The simulation and measurement results were similar for most scenarios. However, there were tolerance variations because to differences between ideal components, and real-world components. Simulations showed slightly higher values than the measurements. Overall, the air coils had the lowest efficiency results, the air coils with added cores had intermediate efficiency results, and the E-core coils showed the highest efficiency results.