Hardware-in-the-Loop Investigation of Rotor Heating in a 5 MW HTS Propulsion Motor

Of particular concern to designers of HTS machines are potential heating effects in the superconducting windings due to AC losses caused by load fluctuations encountered in real-life operating conditions. A 5 MW HTS synchronous prototype ship propulsion motor has been tested extensively under steady-state and dynamic load conditions in the advanced test facility of the Center for Advanced Power Systems at Florida State University. This paper presents results from two tests of rotor heating effects, one employing single frequency torque oscillations and the other more realistic load modeling of sea-states by means of hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) real-time simulations. Temperature results from 4 different torque oscillation tests and 12 different sea-state tests provide rotor-heating information, obtained from multiple temperature sensor data within the HTS rotor, and are compared with data obtained from steady-state runs.