Performance Evaluation and Reliability Enhancement of Switched Reluctance Drive System by a Novel Integrated Power Converter

In this paper, the performance and reliability of a cost-effective novel integrated power converter (NIPC) are investigated in comparison to the asymmetric half-bridge power converter (AHBPC) for switched reluctance drive (SRD) system. First, with the soft chopping manner, the working modes and voltage equations of NIPC are illustrated to develop the conventional control strategies. Second, given that the power switches are the reliability-critical devices of converters, a novel control strategy is put forward to shorten the operation time and lower the electrical stress of power switches. Besides, the SRD system with NIPC can still operate with the faults of power switches, especially the output torque of faulty phase is not zero when the open-circuit fault happens. But in order to further enlarge the output torque of faulty phase and lower the torque ripple, the fault-tolerance strategy is proposed. Next, to effectively evaluate the topologies from the perspective of reliability, a unified Markov model is introduced to conduct the static and dynamic reliability analysis, illustrating that the reliability of NIPC is evidently higher than AHBPC. Finally, the simulation and experiments on a prototype SRD system are developed to verify the effectiveness of proposed NIPC and corresponding control strategies.