Behavioral Methods for Next-Generation Shipboard Power System Simulation: Letting SPARCS Fly

Abstract

Design requirements on modern naval platforms are increasing the complexity and criticality of onboard electric plants. They form the backbone of warship operational capability and are at the heart of maritime decarbonization. Tasks such as assessing the ship's capacity in a damaged state, optimizing the mission profile of a fleet of vehicles, and evaluating broad design spaces in an efficient manner are increasingly difficult as electric network complexity increases. Traditional modeling techniques are either too computationally expensive, or lack the fidelity necessary to produce meaningful insights into the electric network's operation. Behavioral modeling bridges this gap, but is underdeveloped to support the system architectures of tomorrow's ships. This work details the advancement of behavioral modeling of electrical systems to incorporate hybrid AC/DC and ring bus architectures, the development of parallelization techniques, and SPARCS: a software package offering Shipboard Parallelized Analytics with a Rapid Configuration Simulator.