Future warship power systems may be subject to pulsed loads manifesting through emergent combat systems such as directed energy weapons, associated sensors and electronic warfare equipment.  The integration of combat system loads with the ship’s power system means that performance becomes intrinsically linked to combat effectiveness.  Hence, understanding the capability of the power system to service such loads is vital in ensuring the operator’s ability to fight the ship. This paper describes the challenge of pulse load integration from the perspective of the power system design authority.  Modelling and simulation has been employed to study the electrical response of a representative power system when subject to a range pulse load characteristics.  Subsequently, the effects of pulse loading are reviewed in terms of impact upon the prime mover. It is concluded that whilst electrical supply performance can be maintained within allowable power quality limits as defined by STANAG 1008, the mechanical effects can be to the detriment of engine life, highlighting key recommendations to understand both electrical and mechanical performance envelope in design for integration.

This paper presents the design and experimental validation of dc-dynamic biasing for > 50× switching time improvement in severely underdamped fringing-field electrostatic MEMS actuators. The electrostatic fringing-field actuator is used to demonstrate the concept due to its robust device design and inherently low damping conditions. In order to accurately quantify the gap height versus voltage characteristics, a heuristic model is developed. The difference between the heuristic model and numerical simulation is less than 5.6% for typical MEMS geometries. MEMS fixed-fixed beams are fabricated and measured for experimental validation. Good agreement is observed between the calculated and measured results. For a given voltage, the measured and calculated displacements are typically within 10%. Lastly, the derived model is used to design a dc-dynamic bias waveform to improve the switching time of the underdamped MEMS actuators. With dynamic biasing, the measured up-to-down and down-to-up switching time of the actuator is ∼35 μs. On the other hand, coventional step biasing results in a switching time of ∼2 ms for both up-to-down and down-to-up states.