A Short-Circuit Fault Diagnosis Method for Three-Phase Current-Source Inverters Using Normalized Phase Current Variation Trends

This paper presents a fast diagnosis and localization method for switch short-circuit faults (shoot-through faults) in three-phase current-source inverters (CSIs) based on the polarity and variation trends of normalized phase currents. Under short-circuit fault conditions, the variation trends of the two same-polarity phase currents change from opposite (normal) to identical. To capture this feature, an adaptive magnitude-normalization method is proposed, which adaptively distinguishes normal load variations from fault conditions and selects the corresponding normalization strategy, yielding constant-amplitude three-phase currents while retaining polarities and trends. The theoretical operating sector is determined from the current polarities, and the faulty switch is localized using the signs of the variation trends of the two same-polarity currents. The method applies to both single- and multiple-switch faults. Experiments on a 3 A, 50 Hz CSI prototype show an average localization time of 15 ms (0.75Tbase), accurate diagnosis under load (10–30 Ω) and frequency (25–50 Hz) variations, and no need for additional hardware, confirming its effectiveness.