TY - JOUR
T1 - Theoretical Analysis and Experimental Validation of Flying-Capacitor Multilevel Converters under Short-Circuit Fault Conditions
AU - Taul, Mads Graungaard
AU - Pallo, Nathan
AU - Stillwell, Andrew
AU - Pilawa-Podgurski, Robert C.N.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received December 14, 2020; revised February 18, 2021; accepted April 8, 2021. Date of publication April 26, 2021; date of current version July 30, 2021. This work was supported in part by the Reliable Power Electronics-Based Power System (REPEPS) Project at the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, as a part of the Villum Investigator Program funded by the Villum Foundation, and in part by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Electric Drive Technologies Consortium under Award No. DE-EE0008712. Recommended for publication by Associate Editor D. Dujic. (Corresponding author: Robert C. N. Pilawa-Podgurski.) Mads Graungaard Taul is with the Department of Energy Technology, Aalborg University, 9220 Aalborg, Denmark (e-mail: [email protected]).
Publisher Copyright:
© 1986-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2021/11
Y1 - 2021/11
N2 - Addressing the increasing demand for high-efficiency and high-power-density converters, the flying-capacitor multilevel converter has shown itself as a promising topology. A key advantage of this topology is the reduced voltage rating of the switches, though also makes it vulnerable to device failure during short-circuit conditions. Despite large interest in fault-tolerant operation of these converters, alongside detailed descriptions of flying-capacitor balancing, little research has focused on the converter short-circuit fault analysis, which may cause a switch failure if not properly designed for. Therefore, this article presents a comprehensive model describing the large-signal short-circuit switching behavior of a general N-level flying-capacitor multilevel converter. Highly simplified models used to predict the evolution of the switch current and voltage stress during the fault are proposed, targeted at practicing engineers for conservative design guidelines. These models are used to determine the critical time for remedial action of the converter before reaching some predefined maximum conditions. A 2-to-10-level fully configurable flying-capacitor multilevel converter and a fault circuit hardware prototype are used to experimentally perform different short-circuit tests that show a good match to the measured behavior.
AB - Addressing the increasing demand for high-efficiency and high-power-density converters, the flying-capacitor multilevel converter has shown itself as a promising topology. A key advantage of this topology is the reduced voltage rating of the switches, though also makes it vulnerable to device failure during short-circuit conditions. Despite large interest in fault-tolerant operation of these converters, alongside detailed descriptions of flying-capacitor balancing, little research has focused on the converter short-circuit fault analysis, which may cause a switch failure if not properly designed for. Therefore, this article presents a comprehensive model describing the large-signal short-circuit switching behavior of a general N-level flying-capacitor multilevel converter. Highly simplified models used to predict the evolution of the switch current and voltage stress during the fault are proposed, targeted at practicing engineers for conservative design guidelines. These models are used to determine the critical time for remedial action of the converter before reaching some predefined maximum conditions. A 2-to-10-level fully configurable flying-capacitor multilevel converter and a fault circuit hardware prototype are used to experimentally perform different short-circuit tests that show a good match to the measured behavior.
KW - Flying-capacitor multilevel (FCML) converter
KW - modeling
KW - short-circuit
KW - transient response
KW - voltage-source converter
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U2 - 10.1109/TPEL.2021.3075447
DO - 10.1109/TPEL.2021.3075447
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85105104830
SN - 0885-8993
VL - 36
SP - 12292
EP - 12308
JO - IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
IS - 11
M1 - 9416175
ER -