Diagnosis and Tolerance of Common Electrical Faults in T-Type Three-Level Inverters Fed Dual Three-Phase PMSM Drives

Abstract

In this paper, diagnosis and tolerant control schemes have been studied for common electrical faults in T-type three-level inverter fed dual-three phase permanent magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) drives for safety-critical applications. Based on vector space decomposition and double three-phase space vector modulation, diagnostic and tolerant control methods have been developed comprehensively for open-phase faults, open-switch faults, and short-switch faults in T-type three-level inverter fed dual-three-phase PMSM drives, in such way that misdiagnosis of different faults sharing similar faulty features can be avoided. In particular, a two-step diagnostic scheme is proposed in order to simplify the diagnostic process. The first step is to identify the faulty phase and fault category by analyzing current trajectories on harmonic subspace, and the second step is to determine the specific fault type in a small fault-searching area obtained from the first step. In the aspect of fault-tolerant control, a novel current compensation method is proposed for open-phase fault without changing the machine model, space vector diagram, and control framework. Open-switch faults and short-switch faults are tolerated by making full use of the remaining vectors after faults. The validity of the proposed fault diagnosis and tolerance schemes has been verified by experiments.