Framework for quantifying uncertainty in electric ship design

The Office of Naval Research has been sponsoring development of analytic tools for exploring the benefits of electric drive propulsion for naval vessels. RAND has performed an initial assessment to assist in this work. Researchers focused on developing a framework for assessing the different technologies for key components of electric propulsion, such as motors, generators, and power electronics, but did not assess specific alternatives. This documented briefing outlines the approach the authors developed for making such assessments (which uses modeling and Monte Carlo simulations), presents the quantitative methods they used to analyze the potential performance of various components, suggests how this information can be integrated to assess the affects on overall ship performance. The authors illustrate this by presenting performance metrics for several components and examining their effects on one key ship-level performance metric, ship power density for a notional electric-propulsion destroyer.