A hybrid electric vehicle powertrain with fault-tolerant capability

This paper presents a fault-tolerant design of powertrain for series hybrid electric vehicles (SHEVs). Through introduction of a common redundant phase leg for the rectifier, the inverter and the buck/boost converter of the standard drive system, a design with minimal cost increase has been realized. The new topology features superior fault-handling capability, post-fault operation at rated power throughput, and improved reliability. The operating principle and control strategy of the fault-tolerance are presented. A Markov reliability model is constructed to quantitatively assess the reliability of the proposed powertrain. Numerical simulation based on a Saber model has been conducted and the results have verified the feasibility and performance of the proposed SHEV drive system with fault-tolerant capability.