Fault diagnosis and tolerant control for power converter in SRM drives

Switched reluctance motors (SRMs) are considered a competitive technology for more electric aircraft and automotive applications due to their excellent fault-tolerant capabilities and robust configuration. In such applications, system reliability is a crucial feature. Therefore, here, a new fault-tolerant control strategy with real-time fault diagnosis for power transistor faults in SRM drives is proposed. The developed fault-tolerant topology is composed of four additional power switches and a relay network based on the conventional asymmetric converter. Moreover, an online fault diagnostic algorithm based on high-frequency (HF) signal injection is proposed. In contrast to the existing strategies that use additional sensors, this diagnostic algorithm extracts the fault signatures from the fundamental current by injecting an HF voltage signal into the upper switches of the asymmetric converter. Open- and short-circuit faults of the power switches are analysed by monitoring the variation in frequency and amplitude of the resulting HF current along with the amplitude variation in fundamental current with the occurrence of fault. Simulations performed on a three-phase 12/8 SRM drive and results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed strategy.