Experimental validation of the simple voltage-vector-location-based method of open-circuit IGBTs faults in DTC-SVM induction motor drive

This paper deals with an open-circuit IGBTs faults diagnostic method that is dedicated for three-phase two-level voltage inverter fed vector controlled induction motor drive systems. The presented technique is based on a transient analysis of a reference voltage space vector in a stationary reference frame and it does not require an extra sensors application. The diagnostic algorithm ensures to detect and localize single power switch failures in a time shorter than one period of a stator current fundamental harmonic, without regard to a drive operation point. The presented sheme of the diagnostic system can be easy applicable in the electric drives that used voltage space vector modulation (SVM) algorithms. The main achievement of the research, whose results have been presented in this paper, is experimental validation of the IGBTs faults diagnosis technique in the drive with the Direct Torque Control (DTC) algorithm.