Active Stabilization for Surge Motion of Moored Vessel in Irregular Head Waves

Abstract

This study was focused on the stabilization of surge motions of a moored vessel under irregular head seas. A two-point moored vessel shows strong non-linearity even in regular sea, owing to its inherent non-linear restoring force. A long-crested irregular wave is subjected to the vessel system, resulting in more complex nonlinear behavior of the displacement and velocities than in the case of regular waves. Sliding mode control (SMC) is implemented in the moored vessel to control both surge displacement and surge velocity. The SMC can provide a closed-loop system with performance and robustness against parameter uncertainties and disturbances; however, chattering is the main drawback for implementing SMC. The goal of minimizing the chattering and state convergence with accuracy is achieved using a quasi-sliding mode that approximates the discontinuous function via a continuous sigmoid function. Numerical simulations were conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm.