Equivalent Inductance Evaluation for Cable Bundles in Shipboard Integrated Power and Energy Systems

Nowadays, the Integrated Power and Energy System (IPES) is no more a marginal part of the ship and the electrical equipment arrangement is becoming increasingly difficult. Indeed, an all-electric cruise ship has 65 km of cable trays and more than 4000 km of power cables to supply all the shipboard electric loads. In this scenario, the cable layout in the cable tray is not considered during the early stage design phase. Nevertheless, different cable arrangements can have undesired effects on the power line parameters. Thus, in this paper a Python code is compared to two different Finite Element Method (FEM) software to assess its effectiveness in calculating the inductance matrix considering the power line arrangement in the cable tray. Secondly, two methods are used to determine the equivalent inductance and evaluate its dependence over the cable layout. It is shown that the effect of cable arrangement in the cable tray on the power line equivalent inductance is not negligible and it should be taken into account in the early stage design phase.