PWM inverter-fed induction motor-based electrical vehicles fault-tolerant control

This paper proposes a fault-tolerant control scheme for PWM inverter-fed induction motor-based electric vehicles. The proposed strategy deals with power switch (IGBTs) failures mitigation within a reconfigurable induction motor control. In a vehicle context, 4-wire and 4-leg PWM inverter topologies are investigated and their performances discussed. Two topologies exploit the induction motor neutral accessibility for fault-tolerant purposes. The 4-wire topology uses then classical hysteresis controllers to account for the IGBT failures. The 4-leg topology, meanwhile, uses a specific 3D space vector PWM to handle vehicle requirements in terms of size (DC bus capacitors) and cost (IGBTs number). Experiments on an induction motor drive and simulations on an electric vehicle are carried-out using a European urban driving cycle to assess the FTC scheme performance and effectiveness.