A Fault-Tolerant Control Method for a PMSM Servo Drive System with a Four-Leg Inverter

In this paper, a fault tolerant control method is proposed for a permeant magnet synchronous motor (PMSM) servo drive system with four leg inverters to cope with the open phase fault. As one of common faults in the motor drive system, the open phase fault will degrade the control performance and efficiency. Even serious damage is caused in some extreme cases. Hence, it is meaningful to realize the fault tolerance of the drive system with open phase fault. The proposed method includes three parts: a torque-producing current calculator, phase voltage determination and voltage distributor. The torque-producing current calculator is designed by taking the third harmonic flux into consideration to calculate the torque-producing current. In the phase voltage determination, it is proved that the third harmonic flux has no influence on the line voltage equation. For healthy operation and fault operation, the voltage requirements in remaining healthy phases are determined based on the line voltages. Finally, two voltage distributors are designed to distributor the phase voltages into remaining inverter leg. The main difference of two voltage distributors is the polarity of two remaining voltage. Compared to the conventional method, the proposed method can reduce the torque ripple under a postfault condition. In addition, the controller structure will not be changed under a pre-fault and postfault condition. The proposed method has been validated by simulated results and experimental results.