A linear programming approach to shipboard electrical system modeling

Operability and dependability metrics can be a valuable tool in early ship design by providing a quantitative analysis of the robustness of the ship´s integrated engineering plant (IEP). However, the use of these metrics involves large numbers of time domain simulations of the IEP. The simulation of such a complex system, which includes electrical and thermal subsystems, can be problematic in terms of computational efficiency. In this paper, a simplified modeling approach based on the fundamental power limitations is set forth. The power flow problem is posed as a linear programming problem which is solved using a simplex method.