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

Abstract

This 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.