Simplified fault tolerant finite control set model predictive control of a five-phase inverter supplying BLDC motor in electric vehicle drive

Multiphase brushless direct current (BLDC) motors can meet the increasing demand for higher reliability in motor drives applicable in electric vehicles by integrating fault diagnosis to a fault-tolerant (FT) control method. To achieve this goal, a modified FT finite control set model predictive control (FCS–MPC) is proposed in this paper. The dead beat control is used to predict the reference voltage applied by the inverter. A sensitivity analysis is done to show the effect of model uncertainty on the controller performance. In addition, a simple, fast and general open switch and short circuit fault detection (FD) method in voltage source inverter (VSI) is presented. The FD method is capable of detecting open switch, open phase, and short circuit faults without any auxiliary variable. Moreover, it is robust to both speed and load transients in a motor drive. To validate the presented theory, experimental results are conducted on a five-phase BLDC motor drive with outer rotor in wheel structure.