On fault tolerance increase of switched reluctance machines

The switched reluctance machine (SRM) is ideal for safety critical applications (aerospace, automotive, defense, medical, etc.) where it is desirable that the electrical drive system to be fault tolerant. The phase independence characteristics of the SRM enable it to operate (at lower power and higher torque ripples) also under partial phase failure conditions. Its reliability can be improved during its conception stage by applying special fault tolerant designs and in its exploit by monitoring its condition and applying fault detection techniques. In the paper first the most typical faults and their detection methods are summarized. In the second part of the paper a fault tolerant SRM structure is proposed and analyzed by means of simulations. The obtained results emphasize the usefulness of fault tolerant SRMs.