Fault-Tolerant Voltage-Source-Inverters for Switched Reluctance Motor Drives

This paper proposes several modifications of the conventional Asymmetric Half-Bridge (ABH) topology for switched reluctance motor (SRM) drives with the aim of increasing its reliability to safety critical applications. This solution intends to achieve fast changing between main and standby redundant devices in fault-tolerant ABH topologies through the combination of mechanical commutators and semiconductors. With those modifications, the energy processing capability can be maintained for the most common failure modes. A survey of previously developed fault tolerant topologies for SRM drives and several aspects of failure modes, detection and isolation mechanisms are also included. The theoretical validity of one the proposed solutions is confirmed by several experimental results.