Legacy military equipment is aging, and in need of upgrading and repairs. The custom designed power supplies that these legacy systems contain are, in general, larger and less efficient than current technology and costly to replace. Some specific examples of military equipment with custom integral power supplies that the American competitiveness institute has recently reverse engineered for potential redesign/upgrade include: - Link-16 MIDS LVT1 Military Data Link Terminal and AN/TRN-30 Radio Beacon which are described as examples for the replacement of original custom power supply designs via the concept of standardized power block programming. Commercial components that are not available open new possibilities for customization and control of power. The use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) power supplies may solve Department of Defence (DoD) issues such as obsolescence, high failure rates and lack of sources, but raises the issue of having to qualify each individual supply, its associated hardware and enclosure for each application. Developing and qualifying a family of enclosures, connectors, power modules and cooling materials/techniques will allow for the combination of these components to form a solution by using a common architecture across various applications. By analyzing the various power requirements across multiple applications it should be possible to determine an initial power range of the standardized power blocks for the application of this concept. The introduction of a more agile power supply design utilizing standard power block programming, will reduce the life cycle costs of power supply systems for DoD equipment, reduce the weight of legacy systems, significantly increase reliability and reduce the cost of forward production. It will also shorten the design cycle time and improve the logistics.
Power supply standardization through power block programming
Energieversorgungsstandardisierung durch Programmierung von Blockkraftwerken
Logistics Spectrum ; 38 , 2 ; 17-20
2004
4 Seiten, 2 Bilder
Aufsatz (Zeitschrift)
Englisch
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