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.