Modeling of the Electric Ship

Abstract

As the United States Navy continues to refine its designs for future ships, one approach that it is currently being explored is to use a unified electrical grid to power every system aboard a ship, including propulsion and weapons. Some concerns with this design are estimating the power demands placed upon the grid by various systems and anticipating transients induced on the grid by high power pulsed loads. The first part of this thesis will focus on the free electron laser (FEL). The FEL will require a substantial amount of power during an engagement; even at reduced levels of readiness, the FEL will still need residual amounts of power in order to fire the weapon in a reasonable amount of time. This thesis will present the power estimates of the FEL for five states of readiness, and will discuss the results of a computer model developed in collaboration with the University of Texas at Austin. The second part of this thesis will focus on the electromagnetic railgun. Specifically, I have developed a model that simulates the charging and discharging an energy storage capacitor and will present the results.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 01, 2010
Accession Number
ADA524693

Entities

People

  • Ryan J. Pifer

Organizations

  • Naval Postgraduate School

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Ac Motors
  • Aircrafts
  • Boats
  • C Programming Language
  • Electric Motors
  • Electric Power
  • Electrical Grids
  • Electrons
  • Energy
  • Energy Storage
  • Free Electron Lasers
  • Free Electrons
  • Lasers
  • Navy
  • Power Supplies
  • Switched Mode Power Supplies
  • United States Naval Academy

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Electrical Engineering
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Pulsed Power and Plasma Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Directed Energy
  • Microelectronics