In today’s large ships a wide use is made of hydraulic machinery to actuate high-torque low-speed onboard loads like rudders, stabilizing fins and bow thrusters. Such mechanical drives are very cumbersome and suffer from serious maintenance and reliability issues. In this paper, a novel all-electric direct-drive oil-free drive solution is proposed based on an inverter-fed permanent magnet linear synchronous motor (PMLSM). The PMLSM is coupled to shipboard rotary loads through an innovative kinematic chain, consisting of a tiller and a prismatic-rotoidal joint, that performs force to torque conversion. The advantages of the PMLSM solution are presented in the paper in terms of compactness, robustness, reliability, efficiency and maintenance. Furthermore, the design optimization of a technology demonstrator which is presently under construction is addressed.
