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http://dx.doi.org/10.6113/JPE.2010.10.1.034

A Fault-Tolerant Control Strategy for Cascaded H-Bridge Multilevel Rectifiers  

Iman-Eini, Hossein (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran)
Farhangi, Shahrokh (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Tehran)
Schanen, Jean-Luc (Grenoble Electrical Engineering Lab, Grenoble Institute of Technology)
Khakbazan-Fard, Mahboubeh (Iran Power Generation, Distribution and Transmission Management Company)
Publication Information
Journal of Power Electronics / v.10, no.1, 2010 , pp. 34-42 More about this Journal
Abstract
Reliability is an important issue in cascaded H-bridge converters (CHB converters) because they use a high number of power semiconductors. A faulty power cell in a CHB converter can potentially lead to expensive downtime and great losses on the consumer side. With a fault-tolerant control strategy, operation can continue with the undamaged cells; thus increasing the reliability of the system. In this paper, the operating principles and the control method for a CHB multilevel rectifier are introduced. The influence of various faults on the CHB converter is investigated. The method of fault diagnosis and the bypassing of failed cells are explained. A fault-tolerant protection strategy is proposed to achieve redundancy in the CHB rectifier. The redundant H-bridge concept helps to deal with device failures and to increase system reliability. Simulation results verify the performance of the proposed strategy.
Keywords
Cascaded H-bridge rectifier; Fault diagnosis and protection; Fault-tolerant design; Redundancy and reliability;
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