Fault Diagnosis Digital Method for Power Transistors in Power Converters of Switched Reluctance Motors

This paper describes four main fault types of the asymmetric bridge power converter in switched reluctance motor drive on power transistors. Two on-line fault diagnosis methods for power transistors in the power converter are proposed. The principle of the proposed diagnosis methods is to detect the real-time current state from some particular positions, and then obtain the diagnosis result and the fault location by logical judgment. One fault diagnosis method is proposed using single current sensor monitoring the chopped bus current; the other method is using dual current sensors scheme monitoring the upper freewheeling bus current and excitation bus current. The simulation results of current states from certain positions of a three-phase 12/8 motor and its power converter are analyzed. Experiments have verified the effectiveness of the proposed fault diagnosis methods. It is shown that the dual current sensors scheme monitoring the upper freewheeling bus current and excitation bus current has the fastest fault response.