Electric Ship Research and Development Consortium (ESRDC)

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) established the Electric Ship Research and Development Consortium in 2002. The group's stated goal is to develop the tools for designing the complex electrical systems for an all-electric fighting ship. This transformational vessel requires unprecedented levels of system complexity to support electric propulsion, energy storage, and electric weapons and sensors. The consortium is also charged with addressing the national shortage of electric power engineers by providing educational opportunities. Consortium members are drawn from universities, government agencies and businesses with expertise in the advanced technologies and electrical system engineering demanded by the scope of this project.

The Electric Ship Research and Development Consortium (ESRDC) brings together in a single entity the combined programs and resources of leading electric power research institutions for research on near to mid-term electric ship concepts. In addition, the consortium addresses the national shortage of electric power engineers by providing educational opportunities for students in state-of-the-art experimental facilities, ensuring the United States superiority in electric systems well into the future. The Office of Naval Research manages the ESRDC. Participating universities include: Florida State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mississippi State University, Purdue University, United States Naval Academy, University of Texas at Austin, and University of South Carolina.

The ESRDC brings together leading research institutions to develop the technologies needed to power the next generation of electric ships. The Consortium is also working to increase the numbers of electric power engineers by providing educational opportunities for students in state-of-the-art experimental facilities. Along with MIT, universities participating in the Consortium include: Florida State University, Mississippi State University, US Naval Academy, Purdue University, University of South Carolina, and University of Texas at Austin.

An integrated, all-electric power system allows a ship to distribute power, as needed, between its electric drive propulsion system and its service electrical system. All-electric military ships will have significantly improved fuel efficiency and effectiveness, reduced internal volume, and smaller crew size. Combat survivability will be increased by eliminating the propulsion shaft and associated systems, which can be damaged by mines. Integrated electric power systems will also support more powerful and reliable weapons. These electro-chemical and high-energy electromagnetic weapons will run on potentially unlimited ammunition-electricity-and will safeguard the ship from dangers of carrying live explosives.

Current topics of stufy include:

(*) Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring -- Navy ships rely heavily on electrical systems, and thus also require high-quality electrical monitoring tools. Ideally, a simple monitoring tool will automate sensor data analysis and reduce the number of sensors needed.

MIT's ESRDC effort has been developing such a tool with Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), which can determine the operating schedule of all major loads as well as the "health" of all major loads. Some advantages of NILM: it requires a minimal suite of sensors; it combines automated data collection with automated data analysis; and it provides dual-use of electrical wiring.

MIT researchers have tested NILM on the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter SENECA, diagnosing coupling failures and determining the presence of leaks in cycling systems, including the ship's vacuum-assisted waste disposal system. The success with these tests, as well as modeling efforts, indicate that NILM is capable of diagnosing problems in critical shipboard systems.

MIT's NILM research has been led by by Professor Steve Leeb of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS). These efforts have been closely coordinated with research of the Virtual Test Bed group at the University of South Carolina and research of Professor Steven Shaw at Montana State University. Professor Dale Word of the University of California, Chico, has also been a collaborator.

(*) Stability and Reconfiguration -- ntelligent reconfiguration of the all-electric ship is a complex task that involves the detection, classification, and identification of multiple and simultaneous faults in a network, as well as the reconfiguration of the network in real time.

Fault is considered to be a stochastic process, that is, the magnitude and timing of faults occur in a random manner. MIT researchers have used the polynomial chaos approach to handle a wide class of stochastic processes. With stochastic modeling, which is the basis for handling uncertainty and reconfiguration in the presence of uncertainty, the researchers have focused on two prototype models that are encountered in both electric and mechanical components: (1) a linear random second-order oscillator, and (2) a nonlinear (Duffing) random oscillator.