Mischa Steurer
Florida State University, Florida, United States
Keywords: Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation, testing, de-risking, power and energy technology
The Center for Advanced Power Systems at Florida State University has developed significant power and energy simulation capabilities that allows them to test real hardware inside the simulation. This hardware in the loop (HIL) simulation capabilities consist of a large scale installation of specialized parallel processing computers that allow for testing of electric power systems simulations in real time. Moreover, power amplifiers in the megawatt scale facilitate the link between the simulation and an actual power equipment device under test (DUT). This facility provides the DoD with an effective cost and risk reduction method for the development of newly emerging electric power and energy (P&E) technology. For example, it enables the Electric Ships Office within the Naval Sea Systems Command Program Executive Office for Ships (NAVSEA PEO ships) to test and demonstrate emerging energy magazine technologies currently developed for directed energy weapon systems and other high power technologies up to TRL6 at minimum risk to the DUT. Because of the inherent flexibility of HIL simulation based testing the DUT can interact with different simulated surrounding test environments, which in turn provides valuable insights into system interactions otherwise only encountered at a full scale land based or even shipboard test environment.