Approaches to shipboard power generation systems design and management. Probabilistic approach to load prediction and system optimal design, sizing and management

This doctoral thesis presents new ideas and formulations on shipboard power system sizing and management. The main motivation behind this work is to fill, at least in part, the current technological and mythological gap between land and marine applications, concerning the sizing and management of power systems. This gap is the result of several changes regarding both the electric and marine applications. Two of these are, for example, the recent increase of electric power installed on board modern vessels and recent development of technologies for land microgrids. In this context, it should be noted that, also the modern ships are comparable to land microgrids, where the generation and loads are close in space and the on board power system may work either islanded or connected to the land grid. Nowadays, microgrids are a hot topic in electric engineering, with a constant development of novel approaches for both their sizing and management. On the other hand, considering the increase in the power installed on board ships, the traditional methods developed in the last century to size and manage these systems have shown increasing limitations and inaccuracies. This results in oversized power generation systems, low performances and high level of air and sea pollution due to ships activities. To overcome these problems and criticalities, this work presents a probabilistic approach to load prediction, which may increase the flexibility of the power system design and allow a significant reduction in the total power installed. Moreover, the traditional method to size the diesel generators, based on satisfying the maximum load, it is revised with the formulation of an optimal problem, which can consider as input either the results of the traditional method to load prediction or those obtained applying the probabilistic one. Finally, due to the recent introduction in land microgrids of energy storage system, which may cover the power fluctuations due to renewable resources, allow a better management of energy and increase the quality of service, an optimum method is developed and described in order to select, size and manage these systems on board ships

Project LOCOST: Laser or Chemical Hybrid Orbital Space Transport

A potential mission in the late 1990s is the servicing of spacecraft assets located in GEO. The Geosynchronous Operations Support Center (GeoShack) will be supported by a space transfer vehicle based at the Space Station (SS). The vehicle will transport cargo between the SS and the GeoShack. A proposed unmanned, laser or chemical hybrid orbital space transfer vehicle (LOCOST) can be used to efficiently transfer cargo between the two orbits. A preliminary design shows that an unmanned, laser/chemical hybrid vehicle results in the fuel savings needed while still providing fast trip times. The LOCOST vehicle receives a 12 MW laser beam from one Earth orbiting, solar pumped, iodide Laser Power Station (LPS). Two Energy Relay Units (ERU) provide laser beam support during periods of line-of-sight blockage by the Earth. The baseline mission specifies a 13 day round trip transfer time. The ship's configuration consist of an optical train, one hydrogen laser engine, two chemical engines, a 18 m by 29 m box truss, a mission-flexible payload module, and propellant tanks. Overall vehicle dry mass is 8,000 kg. Outbound cargo mass is 20,000 kg, and inbound cargo mass is 6,000 kg. The baseline mission needs 93,000 kg of propellants to complete the scenario. Fully fueled, outbound mission mass is 121,000 kg. A regeneratively cooled, single plasma, laser engine design producing a maximum of 768 N of thrust is utilized along with two traditional chemical engines. The payload module is designed to hold 40,000 kg of cargo, though the baseline mission specifies less. A proposed design of a laser/chemical hybrid vehicle provides a trip time and propellant efficient means to transport cargo from the SS to a GeoShack. Its unique, hybrid propulsion system provides safety through redundancy, allows baseline missions to be efficiently executed, while still allowing for the possibility of larger cargo transfers

Volume 60- Issue 8- March, 1949

The Rose Thorn, Rose-Hulman\u27s independent student newspaper.https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/rosethorn/2070/thumbnail.jp

Volume 42 - Issue 6 - March, 1933

https://scholar.rose-hulman.edu/technic/1266/thumbnail.jp