Prime power and pulsed energy storage for em gun equipped tank combat missions

Abstract

Although the development of technologies associated with electric weapons and other high power loads has proceeded for over a decade, the impact of their integration has largely focused on assumptions that sufficient prime power or energy storage would be included in the vehicle to allow the weapon and vehicle propulsion systems to operate completely independently. These assumptions have historically been appropriate for conventional weapon systems, and have resulted in a traditional isolation of weapon system and mobility system performance requirements. The advent of electric drive, electric weapons, and associated power bus technologies has provided a motivation for reexamining the generation and distribution of power and energy in the combat vehicle. The result of this paradigm shift has been the concept of an allelectric combat vehicle with electrical power generated at one or more central points and distributed in a shared manner to all of the vehicle loads. This power sharing would allow each subsystem to be capable of very high performance without the burden of having its own complete power system. Energy stored in the weapon system, for instance, could be used to augment the mobility performance. Likewise, regenerative braking from the wheels or track could provide energy to the weapon system. Quantifying these benefits in power system performance, however, requires a rather detailed look at the duty cycles expected for these systems in their actual battle environment. This paper describes initial simulations carried out for a sample all-electric combat vehicle based on a generic tank-like mission profile. Variations in prime power and pulsed energy store capacity are examined under stationary and dynamic move-andshoot conditions over a simple 30 minute mission profile, and a more complex 50 minute engagement. Results show that by sharing power between the mobility and weapons systems, the prime power required can be reduced significantly from that required by the old method of summing up the worst case loads. Further discussion for continued reduction of the power system required is also included. © 1997 IEEE.