Power switch failures tolerance and remedial strategies of a 4-leg floating interleaved DC/DC boost converter for photovoltaic/fuel cell applications

Abstract

In recent years, many researchers have proposed new DC/DC converters in order to meet the fuel cell requirements. The reliability of these DC/DC converters is crucial in order to guarantee the availability of fuel cell systems. In these converters, power switches ranked the most fragile components. In order to enhance the reliability of DC/DC converters, fuel cell systems have to include fault-tolerant topologies. Usually, dynamic redundancy is employed to make a fault-tolerant converter. Despite this kind of converter allows ensuring a continuity of service in case of faults, the use of dynamic redundancy gets back to increase the complexity of the converter. In order to cope with reliability expectations in DC/DC converters, floating interleaved boost converters seem to be the best solution. Indeed, they have much to offer for fuel cells and DC renewable energy sources (i.e. photovoltaic system), including reduced input current ripple and reliability in case of faults. Despite the offered benefits of this topology, operating degraded modes lead up to undesirable effects such as electrical overstress on components and input current ripple increasing. The aim of this paper is to carry out a thorough analysis of these undesirable effects and to propose remedial strategies to minimize them.

Fuel Cell Lifespan Optimization by Developing a Power Switch Fault‐Tolerant Control in a Floating Interleaved Boost Converter

“…fuel cell, power converters) is one of the most important requirements in order to ensure the availability of the powertrain. In FCEV applications, the PEMFC is generally used as auxiliary power source to extend the autonomy of the vehicle , . An example of FCEV powertrain is shown in Figure .…”

“…In electric vehicle applications, the components of the powertrain are subjected to different physical constraints such as weight and size under limited cost and expected lifetime . For this reason, the DC/DC converter has to have a high power density and voltage ratio as well .…”

“…Furthermore, reliability and availability of PEMFC systems remain major concern so that they can access to the mass FCEV market . Indeed, the presence of failures in PEMFCs and DC/DC converters can lead up to their premature replacements and stop operation.…”

A Robust Adaptive Control of Interleaved Boost Converter with Power Factor Correction in Wind Energy Systems

“…In Ref [15] the authors used the maximum power point tracking (MPPT) to control an IBC in fuel cell electric vehicles. In Ref [16] the authors proposed a power switch failures tolerance and remedial strategy of a 4-leg floating IBC for photovoltaic/fuel cell applications. In Ref [17] the authors provided a comprehensive review of past and present converter topologies applicable to different generatorconverter combinations in wind turbine systems.…”

Passive Fault Tolerant Control of PEMFC air feeding system

“…An experimental test shows good performance of this strategy. In another work, Guilbert et al [7] investigate the effects of the same fault in a 4-legs Floating Other works focus on AFTCS applied to FC systems in order to provide an appropriate control of two important parts of the system: water management and air feeding system. Lebreton et al [8] present an AFTCS containing a FDI based on analytical redundancy, a reconfiguration module and an auto-tuning PID regulator.…”