A low‐cost fault‐tolerant permanent magnet brush‐less direct current motor drive for low‐power electric vehicle applications

Abstract

SummaryThis paper proposes a fault‐tolerant power converter for a voltage source inverter (VSI)‐driven permanent magnet brush‐less direct current (PM‐BLDC) motor drive, which is suitable for low‐power electric vehicle (EV) applications. With the proposed topology, it is possible to deliver rated power to the PM‐BLDC motor even after the incidence of either an open‐circuit fault (OCF) or a short‐circuit fault (SCF) in any one of the switches, which constitute the VSI. The proposed fault‐tolerant PM‐BLDC motor drive requires fewer additional sensors and components compared to the fault‐tolerant power converters, which are reported in the previous literature. Cost analysis, carried out for a 3‐kW motor drive, reveals that an additional cost of only 5% is added to the raw material cost of the traditional PM‐BLDC motor configuration to facilitate fault tolerance. The fault‐tolerant operation of the proposed power converter is experimentally verified with a low‐power laboratory prototype.