Marine Propulsion Load Emulation.

Improved propulsion plant control schemes for gas turbines ships can provide both economic and tactical benefits to the fltt. One way to develop improved propulsion controllers is to use a marine propulsion emulator as an implementation test bed for proposed engine control logic. This paper describes the development and implementation of a load control system for a marine propulsion emulator which uses a water filled dynamometer and 160 horsepower gas turbine. Steady state and transient data were collected and analyzed and a dynamic dynamometer model was developed using the Continuous System Modelling Program CSMP III. A proportional plus derivative control system was designed using the nonlinear CSMP model with a cut-and-try design approach. Hardware control elements including valve positioners and micrprocessor interfaces was programmed with the dynamometer control algorithm and the system was tested to verify the emulator design.