An economical and simple strategy for overcoming the Hall sensor faults in three phase brushless DC motor drive

Abstract

SummaryBrushless DC motors (BLDCs) are highly efficient and have the least maintenance requirement due to which they have replaced many conventional AC motors in various applications like electric vehicles, fans, water pumps, and home appliances. However, like all conventional motors, performance degradation of the BLDC motors can occur due to faults like Hall sensors failure, commutation switch failure, and stator‐winding failure. Among all these failures, this paper focuses on Hall sensor failures and the execution of fault tolerant control. Hall sensors produce an output after every 60° of rotation of the rotor, generating six sequences in one electrical cycle. In this study, each sequence is defined as a sector, which corresponds to the rotor position. Based only on this sector information in each electrical cycle, this paper proposes an uncomplicated detection strategy for Hall sensor fault, which is independent of motor loading and high‐performance processing unit. Along with the diagnosis, an improved faulty signal reconstruction is implemented, which bypasses the fault and continues a smooth performance of the motor. The proposed detection and reconstruction strategies have been simulated in MATLAB Simulink 2020, and the experimental analysis has been conducted to validate the proposed strategies.