ELECTRICAL MACHINES AND DRIVES
Fault-tolerant permanent magnet machine drives
B.C. Mecrow
A.G. Jack
J.A. Haylock
J.Coles
Indexing terms: Permanent magnet machine drives, Fault tolerance, Power converter, Electromagneticperformance
Abstract: The paper examines the use of
permanent magnet machine drives in high
performance, safety-critical applications. Likely
fault modes are identified and machine designs
are developed for fault-tolerant operation,
without severely compromising the drive
performance. Fault tolerance is achieved by
adopting a modular approach to the drive, with
each phase electrically, magnetically, thermally
and physically independent of all others. Power
converter requirements are discussed and methods
for controlling a faulted phase developed to
minimise the impact of a machine or power
converter fault.
List of symbols
Ipu = per unit phase current
Lpu = per unit phase self inductance
Mpu= per unit phase-phase mutual inductance
N = number of turns per phase
Rpu = per unit phase resistance
n = number of phases
I& = per unit peak magnet flux linkage with phase
mpu = per unit electrical frequency (radsh)
1 Introduction
Aerospace applications demand drives with both high
reliability and large power to mass ratios. Recent
research in the USA [l-31 has led to the development
of switched reluctance drives for the aerospace market
because of their inherent fault tolerance, despite an
arguably reduced power density compared to other
machine types. Research by the current authors [4] has
questioned the justification of abandoning high
performance permanent magnet drives.
This paper describes experimental results from a
permanent magnet machine, which has been designed
with fault tolerance in mind. The main thrust of this
contribution is concerned with demonstrating that the
fault-tolerant electromagnetic performance can be
0IEE, 1996
ZEE Proceedings online no. 19960796
Paper first received 5th March 1996 and in revised form 19th June 1996
B.C. Mecrow, A.G. Jack and J.A. Haylock are with the University of
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK
J. Coles is with LucasVarity, Strategic Planning, Advanced Vehicle Sys-
tems Development, UK
IEE Proc.-Electr. Power Appl., Vol. 143, No. 6, November 1996
achieved. The machine must be designed so that even
with a winding or switching device short circuit the
fault currents are limited to a level within steady state
thermal limits. Penalties must be considered in terms of
machine volume and power switching device rating,
although it is shown that these penalties are not severe.
2 Requirements of a fault-tolerant drive
There are many potential faults which can occur in a
drive system: inevitably within this work the range of
faults under consideration must be restricted. For
example, a design which is insensitive to the failure of a
position transducer would probably require sensorless
operation, which is beyond the scope of this paper.
The principal electromagnetic faults which may occur
within the machine are:
(i) winding open circuit
(ii) winding short circuit (phase-ground or within a
phase)
(iii) winding short circuit at the terminals.
Within the power converter the faults under consid-
eration are:
(i) power device open circuit
(ii) power device short circuit
(iii) DC link capacitor failure
The aim is to develop a drive which can continue to
operate with any one of these faults. It has become
clear that the most successful design approach involves
a multiple phase drive in which each phase may be
regarded as a single module. The operation of any one
module must have minimal impact upon the others, so
that in the event of that module failing the others can
continue to operate unaffected.
The above modular approach requires that there
should be minimal electrical, magnetic and thermal
interaction between phases of the drive. This philoso-
phy must extend to both the machine and the power
converter. The requirements are naturally met in a
switched reluctance motor [3]; separate half bridges are
used for each phase and so the phases are electrically
decoupled, and there is low mutual magnetic coupling
between phases. Because the SRM is a singly excited
machine, fault current will not continue to be driven
into a faulted phase, once excitation of that phase is
removed. Furthermore, there is reduced likelihood of a
phase-phase fault because the end windings do not
overlap. However, it must be noted that two phases do
occupy the same slot, so that thermal isolation between
phases is limited.
431
 A conventional permanent magnet machine has a
significantly greater specific output than a switched
reluctance machine, but it has none of the inherent
fault-tolerant capabilities. The following Section will
address how a permanent magnet drive may be
designed to enhance its fault tolerance.
The requirements outlined in the previous Section
naturally fix certain features of the machine design and
drive configuration. These requirements will be
considered for a voltage fed inverter drive.
3.1 Complete electrical isolation between
phases
This can be shown to be an essential requirement if
continued operation is to occur with either a power
device or winding short-circuited. For instance, in a
star connected system the star point may rise to the DC
link voltage, so that no net torque capability remains.
The clear alternative is to drive each phase from a sep-
arate single-phase bridge [SI. This doubles the number
of power devices but only marginally increases the total
power electronic device volt-ampere rating, because
each device need only withstand the phase voltage
rather than the line voltage of star connected systems.
3.2 Implicit limiting of fault currents
The most difficult machine fault to accommodate is a
winding short-circuit. Section 7 shows that a power
electronic device short-circuit failure produces a similar
condition to a winding terminal short circuit, except
that the fault current flows through the converter as
well as the winding. Thus, a phase terminal short-cir-
cuit has received particular attention.
The system was designed without any fuses incorpo-
rated into the drive, as the reliability of fuses is gener-
ally poor. This leaves two possibilities for dealing with
the above fault conditions. (a) The machine can be
deliberately designed with a low per unit inductance, so
that a large fault current flows. Thus, a winding short-
circuit fault will result in a very large winding short-cir-
cuit fault current, the faulted winding will overheat and
subsequently produce an open-circuit. Equally a device
short circuit will produce a very large faulted device
current, and the subsequent heating will eventually pro-
duce an open-circuit condition. Alternatively, (b) the
machine can be designed with a d axis per unit induct-
ance approaching 1.0 per unit, so that a phase terminal
short circuit will not result in steady state motor cur-
rents beyond 1.0 per unit. The thermal limit of the
faulted winding will not be exceeded and the short cir-
cuit can be accommodated over an extended period.
Torque ripple resulting from the short-circuit current in
the faulted phase will inevitably be large unless special
measures are employed.
The second of the above approaches provides a more
reliable, fault-tolerant solution, as the first option
allows very large per unit fault currents to flow in
failed power electronic devices until they turn open cir-
cuit. The faulted device will experience large thermal
stresses, which may lead to disintegration of the pack-
aging and propagation of the fault into surrounding
power devices.
Producing an effective d axis inductance of one per
unit is generally considered difficult to achieve in a
438
small permanent magnet machine, but it is shown in a
later section that this can in fact be achieved relatively
easily.
3.3 Magnetic isolation between phases
Without magnetic isolation, fault currents in one phase
induce large voltages in other phases, preventing
adequate control of them [4].Furthermore, the current
flowing in unfaulted phases supplements the magnet
MMF and so increases the EMF driving fault current.
Thus it becomes clear that for a given unfaulted
armature reaction field the single phase short-circuit
fault current is substantially greater when there is
mutual coupling between phases.
A torque controller has been developed to minimise
the machine output torque ripple when operating in the
faulted condition. The controller identifies current pro-
files which produce a given torque demand for mini-
mum i2R loss under both normal and faulted
conditions, thus giving closed loop torque control. This
torque control was found to be severely impaired by
substantial phase-phase mutual coupling.
The above results show that both the faulted and
unfaulted phases perform substantially worse when
there is mutual coupling between phases, so the
machine should be designed with minimal phase-phase
mutual coupling.
In surface mounted magnet designs the airgap flux
due to armature reaction is small and a substantial
amount of the phase inductance arises due to cross-slot
leakage flux. If this is to remain solely a self inductance
component then each slot should contain the
conductors of one phase only. The component of
armature reaction flux which crosses the airgap will
always contain an element which links the other
phases. However, if a surface mounted magnet design
with a nonmagnetic retaining sleeve is employed, then
the presence of the sleeve, combined with relatively
deep magnets, greatly reduces the airgap component of
the armature reaction field, so that in effect the mutual
coupling is insignificant.
3.4 Effective thermal isolation between
phases
If the stator outer surface is well cooled then the domi-
nant temperature rise in the machine is within each
slot. By ensuring that each slot contains only a single
phase winding then thermal interaction between phases
is minimised.
3.5 Physical isolation between phases
A phase-phase fault is especially serious, since it will
disable two phases. By placing each winding round a
single tooth then all phase windings (including the end
windings) are physically separated, thus virtually
eliminating the possibility of a phase to phase fault.
3.6 Number of phases
The basic criteria used is that the drive should continue
to produce rated power in the event of the failure of
one phase. Hence, if there are n phases, each phase
must be overrated by a fault-tolerant rating factor, F,
where F = n/(n - 1). Thus, if there are three phases,
each drive must be overrated by 50% in order to give
full capability when faulted. Clearly, F falls as the
number of phases rises, but this must be balanced
against the increasing complexity of a high phase
number and the inevitably greater chance of a failure.
\
IEE Proc -Elect? Power Appl , Vol. 143, No 6, November 1996
3.7 Summary
With regard to the machine design, the essential con-
clusions are that the machine should have (i) a surface
mounted magnet rotor design, (ii) a one per-unit arma-
ture self inductance, (iii) each winding wound around a
single tooth and (iv) only one phase winding per slot.
The first two conclusions appear to be in conflict
because a surface mounted magnet machine generally
has a low per unit reactance. However, the key to
achieving these requirements is to design a machine
with a large leakage inductance by controlling the
depth and width of the slot opening, commonly called
the stator reactance slot. In the event of a phase wind-
ing short circuit then one half of the magnet flux which
normally passes up one tooth must be shunted across
each reactance slot. To avoid undue saturation the
reactance slot depth is designed to be approximately
one half of the tooth width, with the reactance slot
width chosen according to the required inductance.
4 Analysis of machine winding failures
In the above discussion a winding short circuit at the
terminals is considered, but no consideration is made
of the more difficult case, where the short occurs
between two adjacent turns of a winding. The single
turn short circuit is a troublesome fault for all machine
types and its detection is a topic of ongoing research.
In a switched reluctance machine it is necessary to
detect the fault quickly and subsequently remove exci-
tation from the faulted phase. In a permanent magnet
machine it is equally important to have fast fault detec-
tion, but once detected a different course of action is
appropriate.
For simplicity of explanation consider a simple case
where a winding of N turns has a sinusoidally varying
flux-linkage from the magnet of magnitude Yf per unit,
and a per unit self inductance, Lpu(assume no phase-
phase mutual coupling in this case). The peak per unit
current which flows in the event of a terminal short
circuit is given by
Qf
Ippu = machine
(%m/.wPU) +LPU
In all but small, slow speed machines the per unit
resistive effect is almost negligible, so that a terminal
short circuit produces very little mean braking torque,
and the fault current is limited by the inductance.
Clearly if Lpu is equal to Yf then l.0pu current will
flow.
Now consider the case where the short is across just
one turn of the N turn winding. The induced current in
this turn is given by
-
- N*.f
( N R p U / j w p u+)L,,
Thus if the inductive term remains greater than the
resistive one the fault current in the shorted turn will
be N pu. In reality the resistive term is generally now
dominant, but the fault current remains very large and
will cause very high localised heating. This can be
explained in general terms by the realisation that the
MMF of the single faulted turn is trying to produce a
component of flux which cancels out the magnet flux
linkage.
It appears, therefore, that while a terminal short
IEE Proc.-Elect?. Power Appl., Vol. 143, No. 6, November 1996
circuit can be accommodated, a single turn short circuit
cannot. However, if the shorted turn can be detected
quickly then the situation can be returned to one
analogous to a terminal short circuit by shorting the
terminals through the power converter. This forces all
the turns to share the winding MMF and reduces the
current in the single faulted turn back to rated value.
Of course such action is dependant upon fault
detection and subsequent application of the terminal
short circuit in less time than the faulted turn reaches
its thermal limit, which may be considerably under one
second.
5 Prototype machine
Section 3 indicates that there should be only one phase
winding per slot to maximise thermal isolation and
minimise mutual coupling between phases. However, to
prevent phase-phase faults it was also concluded that
each coil should be wound around a single tooth, thus
eliminating overlapping end-windings. These two
conclusions make an unusual combination. If each coil
is wound around a single tooth and each slot is to
contain a single phase then a winding configuration
arises in which only every other tooth has a coil
enclosing it. This arrangement is illustrated in Fig. 1.
Fig.1 Fault-tolerant winding arrungement in U six-phase, eight pole-
This may at first appear to be a rather inefficient
form of winding, but in practice it is not. Every slot
remains fully filled and the teeth without coils are still
being utilised as flux return paths. The arrangement is
particularly good in terms of thermal isolation, since all
the phases are spaced out, with a tooth separating
adjoining phases. The additional advantage of nono-
verlapping end-windings in this arrangement makes a
phase-phase fault exceptionally unlikely.
To maintain a high winding pitch factor it is
necessary to ensure that each tooth spans a significant
pole arc. In this design each tooth has been chosen to
span 120 electrical degrees, resulting in three teeth per
pole pair. The winding pattern repeats every two pole
pairs, with 240 electrical degrees between adjacent
phases.
To illustrate the magnetic field distribution, Figs. 2
and 3 show magnetic flux plots for this type of design,
operating first on no-load, and then with a single phase
short-circuit fault. It is clear that flux linking the
faulted phase is effectively reduced to zero by the fault,
and that all the flux which would have travelled up the
tooth enclosed by the faulted phase is now diverted
across the reactance slots. The flux in the adjoining
439
teeth is substantially changed, but no coils link these fault current. The machine has a phase resistance of
teeth. The flux linking all other coils remains virtually 0.27Q2,which is 0 . 0 2 8 ~ ~ .
unchanged. The phase inductances were measured with the
machine stationary, exciting a single phase and
monitoring the phase current and the induced voltages
in the other phases. On this basis the per-phase self
inductance was determined to be 1.25pu, with the
maximum phase-phase mutual inductance never
exceeding 0 . 0 4 4 ~ ~Thus,
. it can be seen that the
objective of minimising mutual coupling between
phases has been achieved.
The machine was then run unloaded and the terminal
voltage monitored. The no-load terminal voltage of
de& on no-load three physically adjacent phases is shown in Fig. 4.
Note that because the three phases are isolated some
third harmonic components of voltage are evident.

Fig.3 Magnetic flux distvibution in a six-phase, eight pole-muchine

design on no-load, with a single phase short circuit

The choice of phase number has been discussed

earlier: a final choice of six phases has been decided as
a compromise between undue redundancy and
additional complexity.
As three phase coils of this machine occupy four Fig.4 Measured no-load voltage in thvee adjacent phases of the six-
poles then the full six coils occupy eight poles. Thus, phase machine
the complete motor must be a multiple of eight poles. trace 1 = phase A terminal voltage
trace 2 = phase B terminal voltage
High pole numbers occupy reduced space, but at the trace 3 = phase C terminal voltage
expense of higher electrical frequencies. Because the vertical scale: 20Vidiv.
machine is to rotate at a relatively high speed, produc-
ing a high rotational frequency, a choice of eight active
poles has been made.
In terms of the machine design the major penalty of
incorporating fault tolerance is associated with the high
per unit reactance required to limit a short-circuit fault
current. Under normal operation, with rated current in
the q-axis, there is a 42 increase in total machine flux
due to the additional armature reaction flux. This
increases the required width of the stator teeth by up to
40%, compared to a machine with negligible reactance.
The increase in tooth width, combined with deeper
reactance slots results in a 10-20% increase in the total
active mass of the machine.
In order to validate the principles two small proto-
type machines have been built and tested. These two
machines differ solely in the magnitude of the armature phases
inductance. Results from the first machine are given in traceAl= phase A terminal voltage
[7] and results from the second machine presented trace 2 = phase B terminal voltage
trace 3 = phase C terminal voltage
below. The knowledge gained from these prototypes trace 4 = phase C current
has led to the design of a 16kW machine and drive to vertical scale: 2OVidiv. and 5NdlV
meet an aircraft fuel pump drive specification.
The test was then repeated, but with one phase
shorted at its terminals. These results, along with the
current in the shorted phase are given in Fig. 5. From
The six phase prototype machine was designed to give comparison with Fig. 4 it is clear that the terminal
a per phase open-circuit voltage of 55V RMS at voltage of the unfaulted phases is virtually unaffected
12000rpm and has a rated phase current of 7.OA RMS. by the faulted phase current. The RMS fault current is
The machine was designed to minimise mutual equal to the design value. Note that the fault current
inductance between phases, whilst achieving a high per- lags the open-circuit voltage of that phase by 90", as
unit self inductance in order to limit the short-circuit the fault current is predominantly limited by the phase
440 IEE Proc -Elect? Power Appl, Vol 143, No 6,November 1996
inductance. The machine can operate indefinitely in
this condition, with the other phases still capable of
generating torque, so that the ability to withstand a
short circuit across any one phase has been
demonstrated.
7 Power device failure
Particular emphasis has been placed upon a power
device short-circuit failure, as this imposes the most
arduous conditions upon the drive.
Fig.6 Single phase bridge
With regard to Fig. 6-8, consider a short-circuit
failure of transistor T1. The most obvious action is to
immediately inhibit the gate drive signals of the other
devices, T2, T3 and T4, which drive that phase.
However, because of the continuation of an induced
phase EMF from the magnets, unidirectional current
continues to flow through the failed device, T1, and the
diode, D3, as shown in Fig. 7. Fig. 9 shows
measurements of the prototype machine with one phase
failed in this manner. This diagram shows how the
current in the faulted phase is unidirectional with an
AC component of approximately the same peak
magnitude as the DC component.
A better strategy for dealing with this fault is to
continuously hold on transistor T3, so that the winding
is effectively shorted at the terminals, and giving the
additional current path shown in Fig. 8. The faulted
phase current is as in the winding terminal short-circuit
shown in Fig. 5, and no longer contains any DC
component. The RMS current in the phase winding
and in the faulted device is reduced by 43 and the peak
current halved. However, in order to take this action it
is essential that the fault is both quickly and accurately
identified [6].

8 Conclusions

This paper has discussed the requirements for a fault-

Fig.7
I -%
1 I
+4
1
D+
1
x
J
Single phase bridge: Sole current path when TI is faulted and all
other deiices are switched off
tolerant permanent magnet machine drive. The work
has shown that the machine should be driven from sep-
arate single phase bridges, and must be capable of
withstanding a short-circuit terminal fault. A design
topology has been produced in which there is effective
magnetic, thermal and physical isolation between
A phases. This has been demonstrated by a series of tests
performed upon a small six phase prototype machine.
T3 D3 The machine is capable of withstanding open and
short-circuit terminal conditions, with the unfaulted
phases continuing to deliver torque. The necessary
DC machine action required to deal with adjacent turn short-circuits
I I has also been discussed.
Remedial converter action to control a phase with a
short-circuit power device has also been discussed and
demonstrated.
Fig.8 Single phase bridge: Additional current path when T3 is continu-
ously switched on 9 Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the EPSRC for the

funding of this work, and Lucas Aerospace Shaftmore
Lane Ltd, LucasVarity, Strategic Planning, Advanced
Vehicle Systems Development, Rolls Royce
International Research and Development Ltd and
Welwyn Components Ltd for their participation in the
research.

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trace 1 = phase A terminal voltage Appl., NOV.1991, 27, (6), pp. 1098-1102
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442 IEE Proc -Electv. Power A p p l , Vol. 143, No. 6, November 1996