Fault-Tolerant Architectures for Six-Phase Permanent Magnet Electrical Machines

The reliability of an electric drive is a primary concern in several applications, such as the automotive, aircraft, and transportation industries. In order to address this objective, multi-phase drives have been the subject of extensive investigation in recent years. In particular, this paper focuses on multi-three-phase electrical machines, composed of multiple three-phase windings fed by either different three-phase converter modules or a unique multi-phase inverter. The redundancy inherent to these machines ensures a high level of fault tolerance, thus guaranteeing uninterrupted drive operation in the case of an open-phase fault. In this work, three different fault-tolerant architectures of a six-phase drive are considered. The comparison includes an additional inverter leg for the purpose of enhancing fault tolerance. This solution for a six-phase electric drive is a novelty. The objective is to compare their performance in the case of an open-phase fault with respect to those observed in healthy operations.