Optimizing the control of permanent magnet polyphase segment synchronous motors in fault tolerant actuation systems

Polyphase permanent magnet synchronous motors are well suited for building high performance fault tolerant actuation systems. Such systems are found for instance in aerospace applications where reliability is a major concern. The first part of the paper summarizes the main features of polyphase permanent magnet segment synchronous motors. In the second part of the paper we study how to build a simple and efficient torque controller when the harmonic content of the machine EMFs can be neglected. In particular it is shown that this controller allows a very easy detection of a fault occurrence and a controller reconfiguration limited to an action on the link existing between the reference values of the phase currents and of the torque.