Study on a simplified converter topology for fault tolerant motor drives

Some of the recent research activities in the area of electrical machines and drives for critical applications (such as aerospace, defence, medical, nuclear power plants, etc.) are focused on looking for various special motor and converter topologies. Nowadays by the help of recent technological advances and developments in the area of power electronics and motor control the fault tolerant electrical machine and drive concept is at a level where it begun to be feasible to be used in practice [1]. Therefore any new results could be of real interest for all the specialists working in these fields. In the paper a simplified power converter topology is proposed for a nine-phase fault-tolerant permanent magnet synchronous machine. By coupled Flux 2D and Simulink transient simulations the behaviour of the drive system under different winding fault conditions is studied. It is proved that using the simplified converter topology near the same torque development capability of the machine in faulty states can be assured. Short discussion on making the converter also fault-tolerant is included in the paper, too.