Simple converter structure for fault tolerant motors

Critical electrical machines and drives systems used in diverse fields like aerospace, defense, medical, nuclear power plants, etc. require both special motor and converter topologies. In our days due to the recent technological advances and developments in the area of power electronics and motor control the fault tolerant electrical machine and drive concept reached a level where it begun to be feasible to be used widely in practice [1], [2]. Hence any new results obtained are of real interest for all the specialists working in these highly developed fields of electrical engineering. The paper presents an analysis of a nine phase fault tolerant permanent magnet synchronous machine fed by a simple power converter under different realistic stator winding fault conditions. By advanced Flux 2D and Simulink transient cosimulations the behavior of the drive system under the considered four different winding fault conditions was studied. It was proved that using the simplified converter topology near the same torque development capability of the machine in faulty states can be assured.