Open-Circuit Fault-Tolerant Control of Multi-Phase PM Machines by Compensating the d-q Axes Currents

This paper presents a novel method to control sinusoidal distributed winding or sinusoidal back electromotive force (back-EMF) multi-phase permanent magnet (PM) machines under open-circuit fault conditions. In this study, five different fault conditions are considered: single-phase, adjacent double-phase, non-adjacent double-phase, adjacent three-phase, and non-adjacent three-phase open circuit conditions. New current sets for the remaining healthy phase under open-circuit fault conditions are obtained by compensating the direct-quadrature (d-q) axes currents. For this purpose, an iterative method has been used to get the new set of currents. D-q axes currents, due to faulty phase/phases, are shared to the healthy phases to obtain the same d-q axes currents as in the healthy condition. Therefore, the same torque is produced as in the healthy condition. The developed method is simulated in MATLAB/Simulink by using a d-q modelled sinusoidal back-EMF five-phase machine. A vector control block diagram has been designed to run the machine under healthy and faulty conditions. The machine model has been run successfully under fault tolerant conditions. Additionally, a finite element analysis (FEA) has been undertaken to simulate the five-phase PM model machine by using MagNet software. Open-circuit fault-tolerant control currents are fed into the coils of the machine model. Satisfactory torque results have been obtained. Because the model five-phase PM machine includes higher order back-EMF harmonics, especially the third harmonic, torque has ripple due to interaction between the fault-tolerant control currents and the higher order back-EMF harmonics.