Self-adaptive reconfigurations of Shipboard Power Systems

The Shipboard Power System (SPS) is the element of a ship that is responsible for supplying energy to vessel operations. This component is critical to the survival and safety of the ship because many accidents may occur during ship navigation are often due to electrical failures. The SPS manages the electrical topology to successfully supply energy to the several onboard components. The proposed reconfiguration architecture uses a distributed and mission-oriented approach based on a generic-purpose self-adaptive middleware (MUSA). This paper illustrates how MUSA has been customized to dynamically reconfigure the electrical circuit of a vessel. In case of failures or unexpected events, it generates at run-time several possible solutions that properly considers ship's mission and the current scenario. The solution also includes a Matlab/Simulink simulator to validate the solution.