Fault-Tolerant Control of BLDC Motor Drive for Electric Vehicle Applications

Sensor failures in BLDC motor drives used in electric vehicles causes discontinuous operation of the drive and subsequent loss of control of the vehicle. Hence, such applications demand a Fault-Tolerant Control(FTC) scheme to ensure reliable operation of the drive system during sensor failures. This paper proposes a reconfigurable type FTC scheme for BLDC motor drive under voltage sensor failure. The drive is equipped with Direct Torque Control(DTC) and Field Oriented Control(FOC) schemes. Under normal condition, drive works with DTC and in the event of voltage sensor fault, the Fault-Tolerant Controller will smoothly transfer the control to FOC, thereby ensuring reliability. The effectiveness of the FTC scheme is validated using simulation in MATLAB/SIMULINK.