Investigations into electro-mechanical interactions within IFEP systems using a holistic simulation tool.

The Integrated Full Electric Propulsion (IFEP) concept is of increasing interest to the commercial and naval industries due to the advantages of flexibility, capability and efficiency it is believed to offer. IFEP systems exhibit tight coupling of electrical and mechanical sub-systems and disturbances are able to propagate easily between them. This leads to a particular requirement for an integrated simulation of the complete electro-mechanical system to ensure that its behaviour is clearly understood. This paper discusses some of the particular challenges of such an approach and presents the methods adopted by the authors in integrating a number of high-fidelity electrical and mechanical models to represent a complete vessel propulsion system. A case study is used to demonstrate the capabilities of the resulting integrated model in simulating the interaction of the electrical and mechanical components to a disturbance to the propulsion drive.