Diagnosis of power transistors open-and short-circuit faults in SRM drives through current error analysis

Switched reluctance motors (SRMs) are being widely adopted in high reliability applications, where an unexpected shutdown due to a component failure might result in the interruption of critical services such as medical, transportation, or military operations. The power converter, being the most susceptible part, succumb to various faults during operation. Therefore, an identification technique for power transistor faults is investigated in this paper. Without installing additional current/voltage sensors or employing complex algorithms, the typical open- and short-circuit faults of the power converter are detected and located effectively by simply analyzing the current errors available for the current control of the drive system. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified thoroughly through simulations based on a 12/8-pole three-phase SRM model.