Failure Mode Mechanism and Effect Analysis of High Voltage DC Arcs in Electric Vehicle Cable*

With a global increase in electric vehicles (EV) the reliability, quality and performance of EVs is becoming increasingly important. High voltage direct current (HVDC) arc events in cables can lead to fires within EVs. Therefore, in this paper we investigate the failure modes mechanisms and effect analysis (FMMEA) of this safety critical issue. The onset of these failure modes can be multi-factorial so we created a statistical design of experiment to investigate the evolution and mitigation of these failures. Analysis of the arc characteristics collected in laboratory models has been decoupled and classified into time sub-domains. Utilising continuous wavelet transform (CWT) for capturing frequency features and minimizing the influence or erroneous signals. Verification testing was performed using a reference arc model in Simulink for comparative analysis of the experimental and simulated data. Mitigation of arcs via the incorporation of a fuse has been proven to provide sufficient circuit protection. Our results indicate that our methodology provides an accurate framework for cable arc classification and mitigation.