Multiple Fault Tolerant Control Strategy for Rotor Field Oriented Induction Motor Drive Fed From CHB Converter With Redundant Cells

Abstract

The article proposes a postfault control strategy for a rotor field oriented induction motor (RFO-IM) drive fed by a cascaded H-bridge multilevel converter (CHB-MLC) with redundant cells in each phase. The objective of the control strategy is to maintain the torque and speed of the RFO-IM in postfault operation and to maximize the converter's power capability by adding a maximum number of power cells during postfault operation. Furthermore, maximum line voltage is utilized from the redundant cells without increasing the dc-link voltage of power cells, and the motor's operating point in the voltage plane is analyzed and determined for various loading conditions during prefault and postfault operation. In the postfault operation, a common mode voltage of fundamental frequency is also added depending on the motor's loading condition and postfault configuration to distribute power evenly among the remaining healthy cells. Theoretical and graphical analyses include the equation of the operating point in the voltage plane, traversal of the operating point from prefault to postfault operation, and selection of common mode voltage of fundamental frequency based on the fault configuration and the motor's loading. The simulation and experimental data are used to validate the proposed fault-tolerant control approach.