Research Projects

Multiphase drives are becoming more and more common in electric vehicle (EV) applications because of their enhanced current handling, flexibility, and fault-tolerance capabilities. But limited research has been carried out on the comprehensive design of a multiphase traction inverter and its fault-tolerant control strategies. Consequently, the intrinsic benefits of multiphase inverters are not utilized. Further, to adopt this new cutting edge technology in an industry, a comprehensive design approach for multiphase traction inverters needs to be studied and an efficient fault-tolerant control technique need to be developed to utilize the multiphase drives capabilities in the EV domain. Therefore, in this proposal, a wide band gap (WBG) based traction inverter will be developed to study and establish the industry standards to adapt the technology. Further, a fault-tolerant control technique will be developed under an open/short circuit fault scenario to overcome the thermal run away and reliable operation of EV. For this, a five-phase/Six phase traction inverter is targeted to design and implement for the multiphase motor drive to test and utilize its intrinsic benefits. Also, the pre fault and post fault analysis will be carried out to asses them in the real EV environment by experiencing various drive cycles. This project is beneficial towards development of high efficient and reliable light weight high duty electric vehicles such as electric trucks and buses etc.