Fault Tolerant Actuator for Steer-By-Wire Application

Reliability and safety of steer-by-wire concepts can be achieved by redundant designs. This paper discusses the design of a fault tolerant concept for a force feedback actuator with a standard three-phase PMSM. In contrast to usual drives, the phases of the machine are separated electrically. This design allows driving the machine with two instead of three phases in case of a fault. A superimposed torque controller adjusts the influence of fault currents and torque harmonics in two-phase operation and guarantees smooth torque at the steering wheel