Contactless power transfer system for high power piezoelectric actuators in aeronautical applications

In this paper, a contactless power transfer system is presented for piezoelectric actuators that need to be supplied by a low frequency signal. A concatenation of full bridge PWM inverter, resonant capacitor, inductive rotating transformer which works at low frequencies and piezoelectric actuator is modeled. The behavior of the system is analyzed in function of the variation at transformer's coupling coefficient and resonant capacitor. Then, an optimization tool is presented where magnetic and power properties of the system are optimized. Piezoelectric actuators will also have a DC component at the output voltage, so an embedded electronic system, that creates an offset minimizing the volume, is shown. Experimental results obtained at the prototype are finally exposed and compared to the simulations.