A Method to Diagnose Failures in High Voltage Contactors and Fuse for Safe Operation of Battery Pack

Battery-powered electric vehicles have the possibility to be one of the most disruptive technologies of the early 21st century. In electric vehicles, advancements are being done for better performance and safety. The safe operation of the battery pack is one of the critical concerns for the safe operation of an electric vehicle. With the limited number of voltage and current measurement points, the method proposed in this paper ensures safe operation of the battery pack during all the vehicle operating modes, i.e. key on, key off, drive and charge. The method proposed provides an efficient and cost-effective solution to perform contactor weld check operation and diagnosis of short circuit fault during Precharge of the DC bus capacitor. The proposed solution can also be extended to other high voltage applications like static power banks.