Influence of environmental aspects upon the reliability of motor drive systems: Evaluation based on fuzzy rules

This paper presents contributions to the reliability evaluation of drive systems constituted by induction motors supplied by frequency converters, taking into consideration the impact of environmental aspects on the failure rates of the system components, by means of fuzzy rules. As the main contributions of this work, can be cited: (i) a critical and comparative analysis of the main standards for failure rate prediction, as well as standards for ambient classification and environmental factors which degrade electronic components; (ii) the proposal of a method based on fuzzy rules to determine the stress factor on electronic components due to hostile environments. Finally, an application example of the proposed method is presented for a low voltage motor drive system, being the main reliability figures of merit determined and discussed.