Open-Phase Fault-Tolerant Operation of the Three-Phase Dual Active Bridge Converter

Maxime Berger, Ilhan Kocar, Handy Fortin-Blanchette, Carl Lavertu

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

38 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The three-phase dual active bridge (3p-DAB) converter is widely considered in dc-grid applications. Because of the higher number of switches in the 3p-DAB, it can be argued that the reliability of the 3p-DAB is reduced when compared to other isolated-bidirectional dc-dc converter topologies. The previous work has shown that the 3p-DAB can be operated in a frozen leg fault-tolerant mode, i.e., with the two transistors of the same phase being opened by their gate driver internal protections. Because the free-wheeling diodes are left self-commutated, the analytical characterization of the converter for all voltage and loading conditions is not trivial. In this article, it is proposed to open the faulty phase such as it eliminates the interaction with the faulty-phase free-wheeling diodes. This allows the converter to fall in a characterizable operating mode for all voltage and loading conditions. The results further show that the open-phase operation provides advantages over the frozen leg operation in terms of current stress and power transfer capability. Experimental results on a small-scale closed-loop gallium nitride-based prototype as well as time-domain simulation results are provided to support the theoretical analyses.

Original languageEnglish
Article number8789518
Pages (from-to)3651-3662
Number of pages12
JournalIEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
Volume35
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Apr 2020
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • DC-DC power converters
  • fault tolerance
  • systems modeling

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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