A Turn Fault Mitigation Strategy Based on Current Injection Technique for a Triple Three-Phase PMA SynRM

Abstract

A turn-to-turn short-circuit fault usually causes excessive fault current because of very low impedance associated with a few fault turns. It should be dealt with promptly to avoid further damages to the machine, especially for a permanent magnet (PM) machine. In order to limit the turn fault current, a novel turn fault mitigation strategy based on current injection technique for a triple redundant 3 × 3-phase PM synchronous reluctance machine (PMA SynRM) is investigated in this paper. First, the flux linkage of the fault phase where the fault turns are located is estimated considering the influence of PM and currents in the healthy and fault three-phase sets. This flux linkage, including that of the fault turns, is subsequently reduced by injecting specific currents to the fault three-phase set, leading to much smaller fault current. The proposed current injection method does not affect the operation of the healthy three-phase sets that continue to produce torque. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by extensive finite-element (FE) simulation and experimental tests on a prototype 3 × 3-phase fault-tolerant PMA SynRM drive.