Computation of the Mutual Inductance between

Circular Filaments with Coil Misalignment

Anele O. Amos1, 2, Hamam Ykandar1, 2, 3, Alayli Yasser 2 and Djouani Karim1, 4
Dept. of Electrical Engineering
Tshwane University of Technology, Pretoria, South Africa
2
LISV Laboratory, UVSQ, Paris, France
3
ESIEE Paris Est University, Paris, France
4
LISSI Laboratory Paris Est University, Paris, France
anelea@tut.ac.za, hamama@tut.ac.za, yasser.alayli@lisv.uvsq.fr, djouanik@tut.ac.za
1

Abstract--Although electric vehicles (EV) are a favoured

solution for a greener energy, they require sufficient battery
storage on board in order to provide sufficient driving autonomy.
Plug-in connectors have been commonly proposed for EV battery
charging. However, these are inherently unsafe due to the
exposed electrical terminals.
Contactless inductive power
transfer (CIPT) systems provide a modern technology suitable
for wireless transfer of electric power for EV battery charging.
However, coil misalignment is its inherent problem since the
mutual inductance depends on the shapes and orientations of the
two coils in the CIPT transformer. In this paper the authors
analyse the impact of coil misalignment on the mutual inductance
between circular filaments. This investigation is achieved by
computing relevant and advanced models formulated in the
literature for computing circular filaments with coil
misalignments. Detailed results obtained using SCILAB
application software are given.
Keywordsangular
misalignment;
coil
misalignment;
contactless inductive power transfer system; electric vehicle;
filamentary circular coils; lateral misalignment; mutual inductance

I.

INTRODUCTION

Recently, international debates on environmental issues are

of major concern to developed societies. As a result, their
great priority is to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases
such as carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrous oxide and methane.
Amongst several sectors, this paper focuses on the aspect of
reducing the amount of air-borne pollution which is caused by
the transportation system. To successfully achieve this aim,
many of the big automobile companies are compelled to move
from the manufacturing of internal combustion engine
vehicles (ICEVs) to hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), hydrogen
fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs) and electric vehicles (EVs) [1].
Amongst these eco-friendly vehicles, EVs are a favoured
solution for a greener energy. However, since EVs require
sufficient battery storage on board to maintain its driving
range, users and owners of EVs are faced with the challenge
of limited range travel distance per charge.
To tackle this issue, the plug-in connector has been

commonly proposed in relevant and advanced literatures for

the charging of EV battery [1-3]. However, plug-in connectors
are inherently unsafe because of their exposed electrical
terminals which could cause electrocution especially in wet
and hostile environment. One way to overcome this hurdle is
to employ contactless inductive power transfer (CIPT)
systems.
A contactless inductive power transfer (CIPT) system allows
electrical energy to be transferred over a relatively large air
gap using high frequency magnetic fields [2, 3]. The major
component of CIPT system is the CIPT transformer, which
consists of two coils. Electric power may be transferred
wirelessly when the magnetic field generated by the primary
coil is partly picked up by the secondary coil (see Figs. 1 and
2). However, CIPT systems have the problem of coil
misalignment. This implies that a minimal amount of electric
power transfer is guaranteed due to certain limits of coil
separation distance and coil misalignment (e.g. lateral and
angular misalignments) [4-6]. Therefore, since the mutual
inductance depends on the shapes and orientations of the two
coils in the CIPT transformer [6, 7], the impact of coil
misalignment on the mutual inductance between circular
filaments is investigated in this paper.
Circular coils with air-core are widely used in various
electromagnetic applications. Coils of rectangular crosssection, thin wall solenoids, thin disk coils and filamentary
circular coils are examples of air-core circular coils [8, 9].
However, to achieve the aim of this paper, filamentary circular
coils with both lateral and angular misalignments are
considered since in several electromagnetic applications
regarding coil misalignments, the optimal magnetic coupling
between circular filamentary coils is required [10].
This paper is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the
computation of the mutual inductance between circular
filaments with coil misalignments. Section 3 presents the
results obtained using SCILAB application software. Section 4
presents discussion of the results obtained while section 5
concludes the paper.

Fig. 1: Inductive charging system for electric vehicle

computation time. However, based on a quick comparison

made by Babic [11], it was shown that the mathematical
approach used by Kim [20] led to misleading results.
Based on this information, Babic in [11] showed the right way
to retrieve Grovers formula from magnetic vector potential. It
was argued that the proposed method is very simple, accurate
and practical for engineering applications since all the results
obtained were verified by previously published data and the
software Fast Henry. Finally, it was also concluded that the
approach could be a good alternative to modern numerical
methods such as FEM and BEM.
B. Formula for Computing Mutual Inductance between
Circular Filaments with Coil Misalignment
Using magnetic vector potential approach, the formulated
model for computing the mutual inductance between
filamentary coils with both lateral and angular misalignments
(see Fig. 3) was obtained by Babic [11] as:

Fig. 2: Circuit diagram of CIPT system

II.

MUTUAL INDUCTANCE MODEL

This section presents a brief literature review on the

formulated models for computing mutual inductance between
circular filaments. In addition, the final part of this section
presents relevant and advanced models formulated by Babic in
[11] for computing the mutual inductance between circular
filaments with coil misalignment.
A. Brief Literature Review
Babic in [12] states that the mutual inductance computation
between coaxial circular filaments has been thoroughly treated
by [13-17] and that an accuracy exceeding anything required
in practice is nowadays possible. Several contributions to the
issue of mutual inductance computation have been based on
the application of Maxwells formula, Neumanns formula and
the Biot-Savart law. Maxwell [16] was the first to give the
formula for two circles whose axes intersect. Butterworth [13]
and Snow [17] gave formulas for circular loops with parallel
axes. However, these formulas were slowly convergent and
not useable with a wide range of parameters [11]. Based on
Butterworths formula [13], Grover [14, 15] formulated a
model for computing the mutual inductance between circular
filaments located at any position with respect to each other.
The authors in [18, 19] considered that it is possible to
accurately and rapidly compute the mutual inductance
between circular coils with powerful numerical methods such
as the Finite Element Method (FEM) and the Boundary
Element Method (BEM). Nevertheless, Kim in [20] used a
semi-analytical
method
magnetic
vector
potential
mathematical approach to compute the mutual inductance
between circular filaments with lateral misalignment only. It
was discussed that the method simplifies the mathematical
procedures for computing the mutual inductance, its
associated programming and significantly reduces its

Fig. 3: Filamentary circular coils with angular and lateral misalignment

2 0

R P RS

d
cos
cos k

RS

(1)

d
1

R cos k
S

(2)

k V3

2 0

R P RS

k V3

where

k2
k 1
2

K k

1
2

1 k sin 2

E k

K k E k

1 k 2 sin 2 d

k2

4V

1 V 2

 cos sin

RS
RP

c
RP

V 1 sin 2 cos 2

d2
RS

d
cos cos
RS

where
0 : magnetic permeabili ty of vacuum

Fig. 6: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.05 m

RP : radius of the primary coil

RS : radius of the secondary coil
: angular misalignment

d : lateral misalignment

: angle of integration at any point of the secondary coil

: shape factor of the coil' s physical geometry
c : separation distance between coils
k : is a variable and not indices

K k : complete elleptic integral of the first kind

E k : complete elleptic integral of the second kind
Fig. 7: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.1 m

III.

RESULTS OBTAINED

Based on the formulated model as given in Equation (1)

[11], the following results were obtained using SCILAB
application software. The data used for the simulation is
shown in Table I [10-12].

Fig. 8: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.15 m

Fig. 4: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0 m

Fig. 9: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.2 m

Fig. 5: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.01 m

Fig. 10: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.25 m

Fig. 12: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for 800

Fig. 11: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for c 0.3 m

IV.

DISCUSSION OF RESULTS

Equation (1) is the formula used for computing the mutual

inductance between filamentary circular coils with both lateral
and angular misalignments while equation (2) is used in the
case of lateral misalignment only, i.e. when 0 . The mutual
inductance between filamentary circular coils with both lateral
and angular misalignments is analysed based on Equation (1).
This analysis is achieved via SCILAB application software by
using the data given in Table I. The lateral and angular
misalignments were varied based on their values whereas the
values for the separation distance between circular coils were
fixed for each simulation. The results obtained in Figs. 7-11
show that as the distance between coils as well as lateral and
angular misalignments increase, the mutual inductance
decreases. In other words, at d 0 m and 0 the value of
the mutual inductance is high but as d increases from

0.01 m to 0.25 m and increases from 300 to 750 , the value

of the mutual inductance begins to drop from its high value.
Furthermore, it is observed that at 800 and 850 , the
values of the mutual inductance at any fixed separation
distance keeps decreasing towards zero but at 90 0 , it is
clearly seen in all plots as shown in Figs. 4-13 that the value
of the mutual inductance was either almost zero or zero.
Finally, this investigation therefore shows that in order to
compute the mutual inductance of magnetically coupled coils,
coil misalignments such as lateral and angular must be
considered in the formula for computing the mutual
inductance between circular coils with air-core.

Fig. 13: Mutual inductance versus coil misalignment for 850

TABLE I

Data Used for Simulation

(degree)
0
30
50
75
90

d
(m)
0.00
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25

RS

0.02m

RP

0.05m

4 107 H m

V.

c
(m)
0.00
0.01
0.05
0.10
0.15
0.20
0.25
0.30

CONCLUSION

Electric vehicles (EVs) are a favoured solution for a greener

energy. However, since EVs require sufficient battery storage
on board to maintain its driving range, users and owners of
EVs are faced with the challenge of limited range travel
distance per charge. To overcome this problem, plug-in
connectors have been commonly proposed for EV battery
charging. However, it is inherently unsafe because of its
exposed electrical terminals, which could cause electrocution
especially in wet and hostile environment. Notwithstanding, a
modern way to avoid the disadvantages caused by plug-in
connector is to employ a contactless inductive power transfer
(CIPT) systems. Nevertheless, CIPT systems are faced with
the challenge of coil misalignment. As a result, at certain
limits of coil separation distance and coil misalignment (e.g.
lateral and angular misalignments), a minimal amount of
electric power would be transferred to the on board battery

storage system of EV. Since the mutual inductance depends on

the shapes and orientations of the coils in the CIPT
transformer, the impact of coil misalignment on the mutual
inductance between circular filaments was investigated in this
paper. This investigation was achieved by computing relevant
and advanced models formulated in the literature for
computing circular filaments with coil misalignments. The
results obtained using SCILAB application software show that
as the coil misalignment between circular filaments increase
the mutual inductance between them decreases (see Figs. 413). Finally, this analysis shows that in order to compute the
mutual inductance of magnetically coupled coils, coil
misalignment (e.g. lateral and angular misalignments) must be
considered in its formulated model.

[10]

[11]

[12]

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