Innovative Design of Laminated Bus Bars for Electrical Ships: Three-Leg Approach

Laminated busbars, LBB, can be a competitive component to improve effectiveness of electrical assets on ships, but there is not too much experience yet about accelerated aging, and especially in the shipboard environment. On the other hand, significantly increasing operation voltage levels are expected in electrified ships, together with hybrid supply consisting of AC modulated and DC voltage. This may generate the need of rethinking about LBB design and defining metrics to understand aging and reliability risk issues. This paper proposes the application of the innovative three-leg approach to investigate design and reliability of a LBB used in electrified ships. It is shown that a new model to estimate the inception of surface partial discharges, combined with electric field simulation, can become a powerful tool for LBB design. In particular, validation by partial discharge (PD) measurements, also carried out by an innovative software, not only confirms the prediction capability of the new model, but it also provides clear hints about design and diagnostics. An intriguing take away is that designing through the conventional concepts of creepage, and clearance may be not the proper approach upon increasing voltage and specific power.