Switch Open Fault Detection and Tolerant Operation Method for Three Phase PWM Rectifier

Abstract

-In this paper, the new open fault detection and tolerant operation method for 3 phase PWM rectifier is proposed. When open fault occurred on the inverter switches of 3 Phase PWM rectifier, the DC link voltage ripple is increased because the input current of the faulty phase is distorted. In this case, the quality of electric power would decrease, and the life time of DC link capacitor is decreased. The open fault is detected by a simple MRAS(Model Reference Adaptive System) without additional hardware sensors, and the tolerant operation carried out by turning on the opposite switch of the faulty switch without any redundancy. By the proposed method, the faulty phase input current can be controlled, so that 3-phase input current is balanced relatively under the faulty condition and the voltage ripple of DC link output is reduced. The validity of the proposed technique is proved on the 6kW 3-phase PWM rectifier system by simulation and experiment.