Assessment of a universal reconfiguration-less control approach in open-phase fault operation for multiphase drives

Abstract

Multiphase drives have been important in particular industry applications where reliability is a desired goal. The main reason for this is their inherent fault tolerance. Different nonlinear controllers that do not include modulation stages, like direct torque control (DTC) or model-based predictive control (MPC), have been used in recent times to govern these complex systems, including mandatory control reconfiguration to guarantee the fault tolerance characteristic. A new reconfiguration-less approach based on virtual voltage vectors (VVs) was recently proposed for MPC, providing a natural healthy and faulty closed-loop regulation of a particular asymmetrical six-phase drive. This work validates the interest in the reconfiguration-less approach for direct controllers and multiphase drives.