Abstract
The extensive employment of power semiconductor devices in multilevel inverters (MLIs) has the consequence of increased failure probabilities. With numerous applications demanding highly reliable inverters, several fault-tolerant schemes have been devised to address switch open-circuit faults. This paper analyzes a multilevel inverter topology for IGBT modules undergoing open-circuit faults, a major impediment to reliable operation within a power converter. Reconfiguration of modulation is performed post-fault. A modulation scheme is implemented across failure modes as a hybrid of nearest level control and selective harmonic elimination. Reliability assessment of the topology is performed, including a comparison with previous literature in terms of component requirements and reliability. Simulation results validate the proposed solutions.