Effects of winding faults on the switched reluctance machine's working performances

The switched reluctance machine (SRM) is considered to be ideal for numerous safety-critical applications (in aerospace, automotive, defense, medical, etc.) where it is desirable that the electrical drive systems 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. The paper deals with the most frequent faults of the SRMs and their detection. By means of numeric field analysis the effects of winding faults are also investigated. By using advanced co-simulation techniques the dynamic behavior of the SRM in healthy and several faulty conditions are also studied in the paper. The overall conclusions highlight the advantage of using such electrical machines in applications where an unwanted shutdown could have catastrophic effects on the entire system.