Fault Detection and Localisation of a Three-Phase Inverter with Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor Load Using a Convolutional Neural Network

Fault-tolerant control of a three-phase inverter can be achieved by performing a hardware reconfiguration of the six-switch and three-phase (6S3P) topology to the four-switch and three-phase (4S3P) topology after detection and localisation of the faulty phase. Together with hardware reconfiguration, the SVPWM algorithm must be appropriately modified to handle the new 4S3P topology. The presented study focuses on diagnosing three-phase faults in two steps: fault detection and localisation. Fault detection is needed to recognise the healthy or unhealthy state of the inverter. The binary state recognition problem can be solved by preparing a feature vector that is calculated from phase currents (i(a), i(b), and i(c)) in the time and frequency domains. After the fault diagnosis system recognises the unhealthy state, it investigates the signals to localise which phase of the inverter is faulty. The multiclass classification was solved by a transformation of the three-phase currents into a single RGB image and by training a convolutional neural network. The proposed methodology for the diagnosis of three-phase inverters was tested based on a simulation model representing a laboratory test bench. After the learning process, fault detection was possible based on a 128-sample window (corresponding to a time of 0.64 ms) with an accuracy of 99 percent. In the next step, the localisation of selected individual faults was performed on the basis of a 256-sample window (corresponding to a time of 1.28 ms) with an accuracy of 100 percent.