The protection system in a shipboard power system plays a vital role in detecting the fault conditions, isolating the faulted zone and preventing the fault propagation into other vital sections onboard the ship. The protection system should be able to remove faults and restore the service to all the vital loads rapidly. In order to design the protection system, preliminary hardware-in-the-loop testing is done using bus differential relay hardware and a Real Time Digital Simulator (RTDS). In this thesis work, based upon the functionalities of the relay hardware the software differential relay model is designed and simulated using the RSCAD Version 2.00 software suite and RTDS. The software differential relay model developed in RSCAD was tested on a terrestrial power system and a shipboard power system test case for various fault conditions, and its functionalities are validated based upon the hardware-in-the-loop test results.

A shipboard power system (SPS) should be stable and reliable in order to ensure that the ship has better fight-through capability and increased fault invulnerability. The protection system is designed to minimize the effects of faults in the SPS, which presents challenges, such as increased fault vulnerability and lack of an electrical ground in the system. If protection devices are not updated after power system reconfiguration, they may not protect the power system appropriately. Therefore the development of elaborate digital protection devices for the SPS is required. This thesis focuses on the model-based methodology for designing a protection scheme for SPS based on instantaneous overcurrent digital relays. To achieve this, an instantaneous overcurrent relay model is first developed in MATLAB/Simulink. Then, the Simulink model is downloaded to the DSP-based platform dSPACE, which runs the Simulink model in real-time, to perform hardware-in-the-loop testing (HIL). Thus, through the dSPACE hardware, the proposed relay model is tested for various fault conditions in three HIL platforms. Different electromagnetic transient real-time digital simulators are used to simulate the SPS, to which protection is provided through the relay modeled in dSPACE. Simulation results from these three HIL platforms demonstrate that the proposed overcurrent relay model was successfully modeled, simulated and tested using various tools for model-based design. Testing results show that the developed model can work with different real-time platforms, and that in contrast to a commercial relay, the developed relay model has increased flexibility because settings such as reclose delay and pickup value can be changed online. This feature can be used to develop an advanced relay model with a dynamic pickup value. An advanced relay model will be useful for the SPS, because such system is subject to topological changes and reconfiguration that are not as prevalent in other types of power systems.

Recent advancements in Voltage Source Converters (VSCs) of high-voltage and high-power rating had a significant impact on the development of Multi-Terminal HVDC (MTDC) power transmission systems. The U.S. Navy has proposed Multi-Zonal Medium Voltage DC (MVDC) Shipboard Power System (SPS) architecture for the next generation of their surface combatant. A Multi-Zonal MVDC SPS consists of several VSCs exchanging power through a DC network. Following a system fault or damage, the current flow pattern in the DC distribution grid will change and the DC voltages across the VSCs will assume new values. DC voltage reference or power reference settings of VSCs have to be determined, in advance, which can maintain the DC voltage within desired margins (usually 5% around the nominal value) in steady state, under the prefault as well as the postault conditions. In this work, the reference settings have been pre-determined by: (1) Development of a sensitivity based algorithm for voltage control of VSCs of the DC system and (2) Development of an optimal algorithm for voltage and power control of the VSCs. The algorithms have been tested on a simplified representation of the MVDC SPS architecture.

The differences between shipboard and land based power systems are explored to support the main focus of this work. A model was developed for simulating hidden failures on shipboard integrated propulsion plants, IPP. The model was then used to evaluate the segregation of the IPP high voltage, HV, buses in a similar fashion as a shipboard firemain. The HV buses were segregated when loss of propulsion power would put the ship as risk. This new treatment reduces the region of vulnerability by providing a high impedance boundary that limits the effects of a hidden failure of a current magnitude or differential based protective element, without the installation of any additional hardware or software. It is shown that this protection could be further improved through the use of a simple adaptive protection scheme that disarms unneeded protective elements in certain configurations. / Master of Science

Multi-pulse converters have been widely used for a multi-megawatt scale power generating system to comply with harmonic regulations. Among all types of multi-pulse converters, a 12-pulse converter is the most widely used due to the simple structure, which consists of a delta-delta and a delta-wye phase-shift transformer pair and it effectively mitigates undesirable harmonics from the nonlinear load. In the early 2000s, a shunt type passive front-end for a shipboard power system was proposed. By shunting the two gensets with 30° phase angle difference, a single phase-shift transformer effectively eliminates 5th and 7th harmonics. It achieves a significant size and weight reduction compared to a 12-pulse converter while keep the comparable harmonic cancellation performance. Recently, a hybrid type front-end was proposed. On top of the passive front-end, 3 phase active power filter was added and an additional harmonic cancellation was achieved to further eliminate 11th and 13th harmonics. However, the performance of both the passive and hybrid type front-end are highly dependent on the size of the line reactor in ac mains. A back to back active power filter is proposed in this dissertation to replace the phase-shift transformer in the multi-generator power architecture. The proposed front-end does not include phase-shift transformer and the size and the weight of the overall front-end can be significantly reduced. Due to the active harmonic compensation, the back to back front-end achieves better power quality and the line reactor dependency is improved. The number of required dc-link capacitors is reduced by half by introducing a back to back configuration and the capacitor size is reduced by adjusting the phase angle difference of genset to cancel out the most significant voltage harmonics in the shared dc-link bus. The overview of the existing shunt type front-end is provided and the concept of back to back active power filter is validated by simulation and prototype hardware. The comparison between existing front-end and the proposed front-end is provided to highlight the superior performance of back to back active front-end. The dc-link bus current and voltage ripple analysis is provided to explain the dc-link ripple reduction mechanism. / Doctor of Philosophy / The transportation electrification has gained more and more attention due to its smaller carbon dioxide emission, better fuel efficiency. The recent advances in power devices, microcontrollers, and transducers accelerate the electrification of transportation. This trend is shown in the propulsion system in marine transport as well and the electric propulsion system has been widely used to meet the strict environmental regulations. However, the non-linear circuit components such as capacitor and diode in the electric propulsion system draw non-linear current and significantly deteriorate power quality and lead to critical problems such as reduced life span of circuit components Accordingly, a front-end is required to improve power quality. Also, it is desired to have compact and lightweight front-end for installation flexibility and fuel efficiency improvement. In this dissertation, several front-ends using a phase-shift transformer are reviewed and a detailed analysis is provided to help understand the harmonic cancellation principle of the existing front-end through equivalent circuit analysis, quantitative analysis, and a phasor diagram representation. Based on the analysis of the existing front-ends and shipboard power architecture, lightweight and high-performance front-end is proposed and verified by simulation and prototype hardware. The performance, size comparison between existing front-end and the proposed front-end is provided to show the advantage of the proposed front-end.

In this thesis two methods were developed for precise maritime landing of an autonomous multirotor aircraft based on real-time kinematic (RTK) Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). The first method called RTK-localized method (RLM) uses RTK GNSS measurements to localize a sea vessel and execute the landing. RLM was demonstrated outdoors in hardware and landed on a physically simulated boat called a mock-boat with an average landing error of 9.7 cm. The mock-boat was actuated to have boat-like motion and a forward velocity of ~2 m/s. This method showed that accurate landing is possible with RTK GNSS as the primary means of localizing a sea vessel. The localization was unaided by non-GNSS sensors or an estimator, but lacked full attitude estimation and measurement smoothing. The second method was called RTK-Estimation Method (REM) and provides a more complete and robust solution, particularly at sea. It includes a base (landing pad) estimator to fuse RTK GNSS measurements with a dynamic model of a sea vessel. In contrast to RLM, the estimator provides full attitude estimation and measurement smoothing. The base estimator consists of an EKF in conjunction with a complimentary filter and estimates the relative position, attitude, and velocity of a moving target using RTK GNSS and inertial measurements alone. REM was demonstrated outdoors in hardware for 18 flight tests. The same mock-boat from RLM was used as a substitute for a sea vessel, and the boat motion varied between tests. These dynamics were recorded and performances were compared. The rate of success was high given moderate mock-boat motion and degraded with more aggressive motion. Tests were conducted with forward velocities from 0 to 3 m/s and moderate to high wave like motion. Over all tests for REM, the multirotor landed with an average accuracy of 12.7 cm. The methods described depart from common methods given that the only sensors involved for tracking the sea vessel were RTK GNSS receivers and inertial measurement units. Most current methods rely on computer vision, and can fail in poor lighting conditions, in the presence of ocean spray, and other scenarios. The given solutions do not fail under such conditions. The multirotor was equipped with a standard off-the-shelf autopilot, PX4, and the methods function with common control and estimation schemes. The two methods are capable of landing on relatively small landing pads, on the order of 1 m by 1 m, at sea using measurements from satellites thousands of kilometers away.

This dissertation focuses on constrained control of two applications: helicopter and ocean current turbines (OCT). A major contribution in the helicopter application is a novel model predictive control (MPC) framework for helicopter shipboard operations in high demanding sea-based conditions. A complex helicopter-ship dynamics interface has been developed as a system of implicit nonlinear ordinary differential equations to capture essential characteristics of the nonlinear helicopter dynamics, the ship dynamics, and the ship airwake interactions. Various airwake models such as Control Equivalent Turbulence Inputs (CETI) model and Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) data of the airwake are incorporated in the interface to describe a realistic model of the shipborne helicopter. The feasibility of the MPC design is investigated using two case studies: automatic deck landing during the ship quiescent period in sea state 5, and lateral reposition toward the ship in different wind-over-deck conditions. To improve the overall MPC performance, an updating scheme for the internal model of the MPC is proposed using linearization around operating points. A mixed-integer MPC algorithm is also developed for helicopter precision landing on moving decks. The performance of this control structure is evaluated via numerical simulations of the automatic deck landing in adverse conditions such as landing on up-stroke, and down-stroke moving decks with high energy indices. Kino-dynamic motion planning for coordinated maneuvers to satisfy the helicopter-ship rendezvous conditions is implemented via mixed integer quadratic programming. In the OCT application, the major contribution is that a new idea is leveraged from helicopter blade control by introducing cyclic blade pitch control in OCT. A minimum energy, constrained control method, namely Output Variance Constrained (OVC) control is studied for OCT flight control in the presence of external disturbances. The minimum achievable output variance bounds are also computed and a parametric study of design parameters is conducted to evaluate their influence on the OVC performance. The performance of the OVC control method is evaluated both on the linear and nonlinear OCT models. Furthermore, control design for the OCT with sensor failures is also examined. Lastly, the MPC strategy is also investigated to improve the OCT flight control performance in simultaneous satisfaction of multiple constraints and to avoid blade stall. / Ph. D.

Master of Science / Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering / Noel Schulz / Many situations can cause a fault on a shipboard power system, especially in naval battleships. Batteries and ultra-capacitors are simulated to be backup energy storage devices (ESDs) to power the shipboard power system when an outage or damage occurs. Because ESDs have advantages such as guaranteed load leveling, good transient operation, and energy recovery during braking operation, they are commonly used for electrical ship applications. To fulfill these requirements, an energy management subsystem (EMS) with a specific control algorithm must connect ESDs to the dc link of the motor drive system. In this research, the real-time simulation of shipboard power system (SPS), bidirectional DC-DC converter, EMS, and ESDs are designed, implemented, and controlled on OPAL-RT system to test SPS survivability and ESD performance in various speed operations.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / In today's navy, it is becoming more and more important to reach all areas onboard a ship with key technical resources. In order to accomplish this goal, the already existing physical networks need to be complemented with wireless capability. A sophisticated Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) can provide that vital connectivity to the ship's network resources from almost anywhere on the ship. It would allow sailors to access critical information and immediately communicate with others throughout the ship from any standard wireless device (PDA, laptop and many other hand-held devices). In addition, WLANs greatly mitigate problems due to physical damage to wires or fiber optic cables that are used today. Because the navy's emphasis is on building ships with reduced manning, advanced technology, and lower cost in mind, the idea of a WLAN, which has a deep impact on all those areas, has been of a growing interest to the Navy. The purpose of this thesis is to analyze, model, and simulate a wireless environment on board a variety of naval ship compartments, using the Urbana code. Starting from known inputs (frequency, ship compartment geometry, material properties, propagation computation model, and antenna type), analytical results reflecting the propagation mechanisms, coverage area, and security posture of the WLAN are presented. Variable inputs can then be optimized to achieve a desired signal distribution and to meet security requirements for a specific shipboard environment. / Lieutenant Junior Grade, Tunisian Navy

Precision landing capability is a necessary development that must take place before unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) can realize their full potential in today's modern society. Current multirotor UAS are heavily reliant on GPS data to provide positioning information for landing. While generally accurate to within several meters, much higher levels of accuracy are needed to ensure safe and trouble-free operations in several UAS applications that are currently being pursued. Examples of these applications include package delivery, automatic docking and recharging, and landing on moving vehicles. The specific problem we consider is that of precision landing of a multirotor unmanned aircraft on a small barge at sea---which presents several significant challenges. Not only must we land on a moving vehicle, but the vessel also experiences random rotational and translational motion as a result of waves and wind. Because maritime operations often span long periods of time, it is also desirable that precision landing can occur at any time---day or night.In this work we present a complete approach for precision shipboard landing and address each of the aforementioned challenges. Our method is enabled by leveraging an on-board camera and a specialized landing target which can be detected in light or dark conditions. Features belonging to the target are extracted from camera imagery and are used to compute image-based visual servoing velocity commands that lead to precise alignment between the multirotor and landing target. To enable the multirotor to match the horizontal velocities of the barge, an extended Kalman filter is used to generate feed-forward velocity reference commands. The complete landing procedure is guided by a state machine architecture that incorporates corrections to account for wind, and is also capable of quickly reacquiring the landing target in a loss event. Our approach is thoroughly validated through full-scale outdoor flight tests and is shown to be reliable, timely, and accurate to within 4 to 10 centimeters.