Electronic Drive Motors used in Naval Vessels Essay

Electronic Drive Motors used in Naval Vessels - Essay Example According to an analysis of various ships conducted by the US Navy, the electric drive propulsion ships utilizes 10 to 25 percent lesser energy as compared to the traditional mechanical drive propulsion ships and thus are very likely to contribute to the Navy’s target of achieving environmental sustainability in consumption of fuel by its vessels and by the naval equipment (Baldwin & Baldwin, 2008). There other advantages of electric drive propulsion system because of being newer in technology it can incorporate in it the latest technology and can easily support the automated system and the various systems on the ship can be easily shifted to electric control and can easily be automated. Electric drive propulsion system can use the new propeller/stem configurations such as the podded propulsor which is very effective in increasing the fuel efficiency of the ships due the improvements in the hydrodynamic efficiency of the ships (Hobart, 1911). The incorporation of the podded pr opulsor system can help in further saving the fuels up to 15 percent. Figure 2 Podded Propulsor [http://accessscience.com/loadBinary.aspx?filename=YB001201FG0030.gif] While incorporating an electric drive system in a naval vessel there are other concerns beside the propulsion of the ship and the electricity required for the control room electrical panels and boards. The guns and other security equipment installed on a naval vessel are also mechanically operated and in order to convert the operation completely into an electric system the mechanical system installed on the ships will also needed to be converted to electric power. One solution is to use an integrated electric drive system with more advanced motor type known as the advanced induction motor AIM. But this type of electric motors can are only sufficient for the most primitive guns such as the DDG-1000 destroyer and cannot be used for the guns and security and combat equipments which require a larger power for their operati on. The other technologies which can be used for powering the larger guns and combat equipment include permanent magnet motor (PMM) and high temperature super conducting synchronous motor (HTS). The conversion technology used should be efficient enough to convert and distribute the shipboard electrical power for the development of a propulsion system with more reliability, survivability and power quality. Permanent Magnet Motor A permanent magnet motor does not have a field winding on the stator frame and thus relies on permanent magnets to provide the magnetic field against which rotor field interacts to produce torque. The commutation under load on large motors can be easily improved by the use of compensating windings in series with the armature. The power consumption of the field winding can be easily eliminated by the use of permanent magnet fields (stators) and thus most of the large motors are dynamo types which utilize stator winding. The various operations on the ship and n aval vessels powered by electrical