Fault detection of open-switch damage in voltage-fed PWM motor drive systems

This paper investigates the use of different techniques for fault detection in voltage-fed asynchronous machine drive systems. With the proposed techniques it is possible to detect and identify the power switch in which the fault has occurred. Such detection requires the measurement of some voltages and is based on the analytical model of the voltage source inverter. Simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate the correctness of the proposed techniques. The results obtained so far indicate that it is possible to embed some fault-tolerant properties for the voltage-fed asynchronous machine drive system.