Research on fault analysis and fault-tolerant control of EV/HEV powertrain

This paper presents research works in the topics of fault analysis and fault tolerant control of an electric vehicle powered by an inverter-fed induction motor drive and the usual sensors. The considered failures are mainly measurement error due to faulty sensors and power inverter malfunctions. When sensor failure occurs, both software and hardware redundancies have been investigated. Software redundancy has been evaluated in case of speed sensor failure. Hardware redundancy has been used in the case of power inverter failures with a fault-tolerant 4-leg topology. This topology exploits the induction motor neutral accessibility for fault-tolerant purposes. The proposed fault-tolerant approach brings a significant improvement compared to the phase-leg topology. This paper also presents the experimental validation of an efficient reconfiguration mechanism (transition strategy) at sensor fault occurrence.