Fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control strategy for interleaved boost DC/DC converter dedicated to PEM fuel cell applications.

Abstract

This paper proposes an improved fault diagnosis and fault tolerant control (FTC) strategy for interleaved boost DC/DC converter that is suitable for fuel-cell applications.

This paper investigates a two-phase interleaved boost DC-DC converter. This design offers several advantages, including:

Low ripple current, by splitting the load current between two phases, the ripple current at the input and output is significantly reduced compared to a single-phase converter.

Reduced semiconductor stress, Each phase handles only a fraction (1/N) of the total current, which reduces stress on individual components and promotes higher reliability and operating margins.

Furthermore, the paper proposes and evaluates an H-infinity controller for the converter. This advanced control strategy ensures robust performance despite variations in reference voltage and load conditions.

The power converter suffers from failure switching due to various factors. To address these drawbacks and achieve both accurate reference tracking with desired dynamic response and rapid fault detection, an algorithm based on current-slopes are proposed.

Minimizing current ripples is crucial to ensure the longevity of PEMFCs, so the interleaved boost converter structure is dedicated to the PEMFCs in order to reduces the ripple of the generated current.

The overall system has been simulated using MATLAB/Simulink software under different conditions such as reference voltage variation, load variation, and Short Circuit default ; the obtained  results in different phase demonstrate the higher  performance, of the proposed systems in terms of  dynamic performance, fast fault detection and fault tolerant action to restore the health stat.