Electromagnetic performance analysis and fault-tolerant control of new doubly salient flux memory motor drive

For some applications such as electric vehicles, the reliability of AC motors is highly desirable, so the fault tolerant operation of motor drives becomes very important and attracts extensive attentions. In this paper, a new doubly salient flux memory motor with high fault-tolerant capability is investigated in details. Under the open-circuit fault, a remediation strategy, named field-reconfiguration in brushless AC (BLAC) operation is proposed to handle the fault. Under the short-circuit fault, the AINiCo permanent magnet can be purposely fully demagnetized so that the doubly salient flux memory motor is switched to operate as a switch reluctance motor. Both theoretic analysis and finite element analysis results confirm that the motor can offer high fault tolerance while retaining high efficiency and high power density.