System-Level Dynamic Thermal Modeling and Simulation for an All-Electric Ship Cooling System in VTB

A system-level dynamic simulation of a thermo-electrical coupled model for a ship cooling system was developed in the virtual test bed (VTB) platform. This paper presents dynamic simulations for two most essential cooling schemes used in the ship thermal management. One configuration is freshwater cooling with seawater as the secondary coolant. The other configuration is chilled water cooling from the ship's air conditioning plants. Details of some major thermal components used in the simulations are identified. The results from these simulations clearly demonstrate the ability of the VTB environment to simulate the dynamic behavior of complex and coupled devices. The work presented in this paper provides the first step to use VTB as a potential system-level dynamic simulation platform for an all-electric ship thermal management.