Comparative study of fault-tolerant performance of a segmented rotor SRM and a conventional SRM

Due to the separation of magnetic field, electrical isolation and thermal isolation, motor drives possess a high fault-tolerance characteristic. In this paper, comparative study of mutual inductance between the proposed segmented rotor switched reluctance motor (SSRM) and the conventional switched reluctance motor (SRM) is carried out first, illustrating that the proposed SSRM has less mutual inductance between phases than the conventional SRM. In addition, if winding faults or power converter faults lead to phase failure, a comparative analysis on fault-tolerant performance under phase failure condition between the proposed SSRM and the conventional SRM is simulated in detail using the finite element method (FEM). Simulation results reveal that dynamic performance of the proposed SSRM, including output torque and phase current, is better than that of the conventional SRM. That is, the capacity of operating with the fault under phase failure condition in the proposed SSRM is superior to that in the conventional SRM.