Fault detection and fault tolerant control of interior permanent magnet motor drive system for electric vehicle

This paper presents a control strategy that provides fault tolerance to the major sensor faults which may occur in an interior permanent magnet motor (IPMM) based electric vehicle propulsion drive system. Failures of a position sensor, a DC link sensor and current sensors are all included in the study. For each possible sensor fault, a corresponding method of detection or diagnosis is provided. Additionally, once the fault is detected, the control scheme is automatically reconfigured to provide postfault operational capability. A state observer is used to provide missing current information in the case of current sensor faults. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of both the fault detection algorithm and the reconfigurable control scheme. The resulting IPMM drive system proves to be resilient to sensor failures while providing graceful transition to the post-fault operational mode.