Fault-tolerance capacity of the multilevel active clamped topology

Thanks to the inherent redundancy to generate the different output voltage levels, the multilevel active clamped (MAC) topology presents an important fault-tolerance ability which makes it interesting for several applications. This paper presents an analysis of the fault-tolerance capacity of the MAC converter. Both open-circuit and short-circuit faults are considered and the analysis is carried out under single-device and two-simultaneous-device faults. Switching strategies to overcome the limitations caused by faults are proposed. Experimental tests with a four-level MAC prototype are presented to validate the analysis.