ONR Electric Ship
Program Description
Background
The U.S. Navy is investing in technology for an electric naval force to enable increasing affordability and military capability. This transformational war fighting capability is based on integrated electric power systems technologies that will include electric propulsion, energy storage, and enable integration of future electric weapons and sensors. The unique and challenging requirements of the electric naval fore require advances in technology and system engineering.
To achieve the goals of the electric naval force, the Navy is making substantial investments in universities to provide the leadership in the technologies and system engineering, as well as the education and training of the employees in both the Navy and industry.
As a result, the Office of Naval Research established the Electric Ship Research and Development Consortium (ESRDC) in 2002 to stimulate a multidisciplinary approach to the electric naval force system complexity, and to develop and engineering to reduce the risk and costs of early decisions.
Consortium Members
The consortium combines the capability of:
- Florida State University
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Mississippi State University
- Purdue University
- United States Naval Academy
- University of South Carolina
- University of Texas at Austin
- Naval Postgraduate School
Proven Administrative Agility
The consortium has proven that it can manage itself and change when necessary for success. Important indicators include:
- Changing management to meet changing conditions. For example, only two of the consortium’s governing board are founding members.
- Changing consortium members to better address Navy problems. Form of the current institutional members were not in the initial consortium. They were added because they had capabilities that could strengthen the consortium and the consortium had capabilities that would strengthen their programs.
Technical Issues
The consortium is a technical success. Important accomplishments include:
- Modeling and simulation capability that has been used by industry and the Navy in the design of new equipment and systems.
- Prototype development programs with industry.
- Technology and software that is being adopted by industry for integration into the fleet.
- Workshops on modeling and simulation, reconfiguration, and power train technology that brought leaders of industry, government and academe to discuss and stimulate technical advances in this area.
- More than 300 papers were presented to the technical community helping to establish U.S. leadership in this area.
- More than 50 students have received advanced degrees for research conducted in support of future electric ships.
Future Directions and Requirements
The ESRDC is working to improve the technical tools of the Navy and the shipbuilders need for electric ship design and manufacturing. The research focus on providing solutions for four ship building challenges.
- Shipbuilding Challenge: Design a first of a kind ship
Technical Tools Being developed by the ESRDC:
High fidelity modeling
Blue Collar supercomputing
Accounting for uncertainty
Reduced fidelity modeling for trades
Couple multi-physics
Multiscale
- Shipbuilding Challenge: Manufacture a first of a kind ship
Technical Tools being developed by the ESRDC:
Model as specifications
Model validation on subsystems
- Shipbuilding Challenge: Reduce cost in production run
Component optimization
Design modification
- Shipbuilding Challenge: Incorporate emerging technology throughout the process
Technical Tools being developed by the ESRDC:
Properties in model and use environment
Subsystem testing using emerging technologies
Consortium is needed to bring to bear required tools
Computing Capability
- Individual engineer workstations
- Beowulf clusters
- Real time digital simulators
- Supercomputers
Validation Capability
- 5 MW propulsion motor test facility – FSU
- MW motor, generator, and storage test – UT
- Distributed control prototyping environment – USNA
- Distributed control prototyping environment – USNA
- Naval combat survivability testbed – Purdue
- High voltage test facility – MSU
DC and AC hardware testbeds
See Also Related Topics on ONR Electric Ship:
Approaches to Shipboard Power Management by Kent Davey
Power System Modeling and Simulation by Hamid Ouroua
Electromagnetic Materials for Machinery-Development and Characterization by Aleta Wilder
Additional Electric Ship Publications
For further information please contact:
Dr. Robert Hebner
(512) 232-162 |
