An experimental investigation of additional actuators on a submarine diesel generator

Abstract

Additional actuators and active generator load control have been suggested to improve performance on submarine diesel generators. Until recently, a lack of systematic control design has limited the ability to thoroughly investigate their potential. In this paper, model predictive control is used to produce near-optimal actuator commands for an experimental diesel generator on a test bed capable of producing representative submarine operating conditions. The performance with different actuator subsets is compared against an existing speed governor control architecture over a range of operating conditions. It is demonstrated that a minimum of two actuators may substantially improve generator p..