Graph theory-based ship power system expansion strategy for enhanced resilience

Abstract

The next-generation ships are geared to more electrification than ever before. In an all-electric ship, the design and planning of a shipboard power system (SPS) is critical for ensuring survivability against any physical attacks on the power lines. Therefore, enhancing the system resilience against malicious physical attacks is a pressing problem of the SPS. This paper proposes a graph theory based power line expansion strategy. The proposed method simultaneously maximizes the algebraic connectivity and weighted max-flow from generator nodes to load nodes in the graphical representation of the SPS. Furthermore, the proposed strategy is compared against a baseline strategy for reducing the operational cost. Several tests are conducted to demonstrate the performance of the proposed strategy on a shipboard direct current power system.