Full scale land based testing of the US Navy's Integrated Power System (IPS)

摘要

The US Navy has been researching integrated electric propulsion systems for many years. The economica advantages of the integrated electric architecture are well recognised and such systems are used throughout many sectors of the commercial marineindustry today. In addition to the economic advantages, there are millitary benefits to the ship when an IPS architecture is adopted. Those include increased reliability and survivability, reduce signatures and increased upgradeability. The present development program aims to leverage off the commercial marine industry by adapting proven technology, where applicable, to the warship environment. However, in some areas, commercial marine technology is inadequate to meet the more stringent military requirements of warships. In those areas, developments were undertaken to create technology that is capable of meeting the warship requirements in an affordable manner. Many of those developments, direct current zonal electrical distribution and high power (20 MW) pulse-width modulated (PWM) motor drives, for example, have resulted in technological leaps forward in many areas of electric propulsion, power conversion, packaging, signatures and control. A full-scale land based engineering site (LBES) was constructed to demonstrate the system architecture and feasibility of chosen technologies for a warship application. This paper discusses the requirements that led to these technology improvements, some of the technological advances, test site construction, system integration issues and presents results of the full scale land based system tests conducted in 1999. Additionally, design issues such as Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC), acoustic signatures, power quality, development of open interface standards and validation of computer design models will be presented.