Reliability is a fundamental requirement in electric propulsion systems, involving a particular approach in studies on system failure probabilities. An intrinsic improvement to the propulsion system involves introducing robust architectures such as fault-tolerant motor drives to these systems. Considering the potential for hardware failures, a fault-tolerant design approach will achieve reliability objectives without recourse to optimized redundancy or over-sizing the system. Provisions for planned degraded modes of operation are designed to operate the motor in fault-tolerant mode, which makes them different from the pure design redundancy approach. This article presents how a five-phase permanent-magnet synchronous motor operates under one- or two-phase faults, and how the system reconfigures post-fault motor currents to meet the torque and speed requirement of reliable operation that meets the requirements of an electric propulsion system.

This paper investigates an energy-harvesting system that uses of vibration energy at a shock absorber for electric vehicles. This system mainly comprises a linear electromagnetic generator and synchronous buck converter. To obtain the electrical energy through a linear electromagnetic generator, the perturb and observe maximum power point tracking (P&O MPPT) scheme is applied at the converter. The power converter circuit is designed with a diode rectifier and synchronous buck converter. The generated electric power is able to transmit to the battery and the damping force of the shock absorber is adjusted by the controlled current of generator. The linear electromagnetic generator was designed as a single phase eight-slot eight-pole tubular permanent magnet machine. The performance of the proposed energy-harvesting system was verified through simulations and experiments.

This article presents a novel predictive direct torque control (DTC) scheme using an optimized pulsewidth modulation (PWM) and a dead-time compensation. In the proposed method, two effective voltage vectors are selected according to the predicted torque and flux errors based on zero-voltage vector. The back electromotive force and flux-torque coupling are also taken into consideration. The torque and flux variations per sampling period are predicted by the zero-voltage vector and the two effective voltage vectors. The switching period of the three voltage vectors (zero, first effective, and second effective) are determined by the torque and flux errors along with the predicted torque and flux variations that have been calculated in the previous step. To improve the prediction result, a dead-time compensation algorithm and a modified PWM switching scheme are adopted to reduce dead-time effect. The detailed implementation of the proposed control scheme is presented. The effectiveness of the proposed predictive DTC-PWM is verified by both simulation and experiments. The results are also compared with the conventional method.

Based on the dimensions and thresholds of power and power density of a commercial shock absorber in the Korando car (an SUV branch), a single-phase 8 slot - 8 pole tubular permanent magnet machine was designed and fabricated. The main focus of this study was on the increase of output power in a given space and reduction of the volume. This was successfully solved using a novel structure for a permanent magnet and considering a number of slot-pole combinations. Furthermore, a multi-objective optimization was performed to find the trade-off between various objectives. The experimental results reveal that the proposed machine could possibly regenerate a maximum of 339.95 W and an average of 96.67 W in terms of its output power. Considering the active volume, which includes a permanent magnet, iron core, pure copper, and an electromagnetic air gap, the estimated maximum and average power density were 0.311 and 0.087 W/cm $^3$ , respectively. Despite these satisfactory results, one of the major drawbacks to exploiting this machine is its high electromagnetic force, which causes negative effects on safety and driving comfort. With the aim to commercialize the proposed device, further work will be concentrated on the reduction of electromagnetic force and on performance of the road tests.

This paper proposes an algorithm for determining the optimal capacitance by utilizing a mathematical model of a submodule (SM) capacitor in a modular multilevel converter (MMC) specifically for medium voltage motor drives (MVDs). By approximating the voltage fluctuation of the SM capacitor during low-frequency operation, it is feasible to ascertain the minimum capacitance required for the SM capacitor, ensuring that its voltage fluctuations remain within an acceptable limit that is predefined as a specified value. Moreover, the study considered the injection of both a high-frequency common-mode voltage (CMV) and a circulating current to alleviate the SM voltage fluctuation during the acceleration of motor drives. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated through verification using time-domain simulation results obtained using the MATLAB/SIMULINK software and real-time simulation results acquired using the OPAL-RT simulator platform.

This study proposes an adaptive high-frequency injection method (AHFI) aimed at mitigating common-mode voltage (CMV) on the AC side and alleviating current stress on power semiconductor devices within each arm of a medium-voltage motor propulsion system designed for modular multilevel converters. By adjusting the quantity of high-frequency components injected into each arm according to the fluctuation coefficient, the amplitude of injected high-frequency CMV and circulating currents can be reduced across medium to rated motor speeds. This approach enhances the start-up performance of medium-voltage motor drives while diminishing CMV effects on the motor side, resulting in decreased total harmonic distortion (THD) in the three-phase output waveforms. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the proposed AHFI method in SM voltage regulation and circulating current control under low-frequency operation is thoroughly analyzed. The validity of this method is established through comprehensive mathematical scrutiny and time–domain simulations performed using MATLAB/SIMULINK software (MATLAB version R2021b), along with real-time simulations conducted employing the real-time simulator OPAL/RT via hardware-in-the-loop simulation (HILS).