Fault tolerant control of a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell based on a Modified Failure Mode and Effect Analysis

Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cells (PEMFCs) are electrochemical energy converters, suitable for powering electric vehicles. However, for now, fuel cells fail to compete with traditional Internal Combustion Engines (ICE). One of the reasons is their limited durability and reliability compared to ICE which have a lifespan of around 8000h. One solution to improve fuel cell durability is to optimize the PEMFC operating conditions. This is possible by implementing an embedded fault tolerant control in the vehicle control system. In this context, this paper presents a Modified Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (MFMEA) for PEMFCs. An FMEA is an engineering tool that lists all failure modes a system can experience in a table. In this table, ranking define the criticality that the failure has for the system. In this article, a Modified Failure Mode and Effect Analysis (MFMEA) is used as a fault tolerant control apparatus. For this, the MFMEA is coupled with a diagnosis tool. From the results provided by the diagnosis tool, the MFMEA evaluates the criticality of the failure by calculating a Risk Profile Number (RPN). Afterwards, corrective actions are proposed based on the RPN value.