Reconfigurable Open-End Winding Motor Drive Topology for Inverter Short-Circuit Fault Tolerance

Existing open-end winding drives (OWDs) require relatively complex fault detection and diagnosis algorithms to handle inverter short-circuit faults. In addition, the motor cannot continue to output power with the disconnected drive. Therefore, this letter proposes a topology reconfiguration OWD (TR-OWD) with a protection circuit that can quickly isolate an inverter short-circuit fault and reconfigure the drive topology after the fault. The current flow of the protection circuit during the fault transient and the transient and resonant state model are revealed first. Subsequently, based on the step current or voltage signals generated by the faulty inverter, the topology reconfiguration and voltage vector switching of the TR-OWD are presented, maintaining the original operating state of the motor. Finally, the experimental results of the motor with no-load and load conditions are shown to validate the effectiveness of the proposed short-circuit fault-tolerant design of the OWDs. The experimental results also verify the theoretical analysis. © 1986-2012 IEEE.