Fault-Tolerant Multiport Active Bridge Converter for Resilient Energy Storage Integration in Zonal Shipboard DC System

In this paper, the concept of a fault-tolerant multiport converter is proposed for a shipboard zonal DC system. The traditional zonal shipboard system offers a resilient power supply capability at the expense of increased cost and size. To solve this problem, the fault-tolerant multiport active bridge converter is proposed for shared energy storage between DC buses. When a short-circuit fault occurs on one bus, the energy storage can maintain uninterrupted power supply to the remaining healthy bus. With consideration of both normal operation and a fault-tolerant mode, the power transfer capability and ZVS region are analyzed. The proposed converter is compared with a traditional two-converter zonal system and multiport converter in terms of cost, volume, and efficiency. The performance of the proposed FT-MAB converter is tested through experimental verifications with the aim of validating the resilience of the power supply. The proposed FT-MAB converter achieves fault tolerance through topological reconfiguration, isolating the faulty port after the occurrence of a short-circuit fault and providing uninterrupted power supply to the healthy bus.