Thermal Analysis of a Five-Phase Motor Under Faulty Operations

This paper describes the thermal behavior of a five-phase permanent-magnet motor during the postfault control strategy, considering the open-circuit fault of both one and two phases. Proper current control strategies are applied to get proper performance under faulty operating conditions. The current of the healthy phases is contextually increased to get a higher average torque, but maintaining the same Joule losses of the healthy case. It is shown that such increase on the average current does not affect the thermal dissipation, and the motor can continue to operate properly also in faulty conditions. Experimental results confirm the simulation predictions.