Analysis of a cascaded multilevel inverter with fault-tolerant control

Abstract

Cascaded multilevel inverters are widely used in industry for speed control of induction motors and, even when the converters' operation is highly reliable, several faults can occur, leading to poor engine performance or even causing the whole system to stop. It is desirable to keep the system operational when a failure occurs, even when degraded, and implementing fault-tolerant systems are thus a good choice. This paper presents a general strategy for fault-tolerant control in a 7-level cascaded multilevel inverter (the faults are in semiconductor devices); the paper includes simulation and experimental results to validate the method.