In the maritime transport sector, drives with alternative fuels are increasingly being brought onto the market. These have the potential to reduce CO2 and pollutant emissions. In the "Hybrid ships for alternative fuels" project, the dynamic response behaviour of liquefied natural gas (LNG) as an alternative fuel in a hybridized drive concept is being simulated and compared with that of conventional diesel engines. Furthermore, the existing hydrodynamic simulation environment "Hybrid Propulsion Simulation" (HyProS) is being expanded to include free ship maneuvers. The work is being carried out in cooperation with the Department of Marine Engineering and the Institute of Ship Design and Ship Safety at the Technische Universität Hamburg.
Ship propulsion systems with combustion engines that use future gaseous or liquid alternative fuels will have weaknesses in their power dynamics. To compensate for these weaknesses, the combustion engines will be hybridized with electrical components. The hybrid architecture results in overdetermined systems that can only exploit their advantages if the degrees of freedom are used sensibly in the form of suitable control strategies.
The project aims to provide a simulation environment with which a basic design of the ship and its propulsion system can be carried out with sufficient accuracy.
For the simulative mapping of ship engines, data research is first carried out. This concerns the air path of the engines, including turbocharging. Generic, easily parameterizable mean value models are derived from the models created. This significantly reduces the computational effort and achieves real-time capability while maintaining a high simulation quality.
The mean value models are then integrated into HyProS. To ensure the correct operation of the simulation, a control system and suitable control strategies for the drive system are created. The simulation results are validated with test runs on a ship, among other things.
