Abstract
This paper looks at a typical problem encountered in the process of designing an automatic ship’s course stabilisation system with the use of a relatively new methodology referred to as the Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC). The main advantage of this approach over classic autopilots based on PID algorithms, still in the majority, is that it eliminates the tuning problem and, thus, ensures a much better average performance of the ship in various speed, loading, nautical and weather conditions during a voyage. All of these factors call for different and often dynamically variable autopilot parameters, which are difficult to assess, especially by the ship’s crew or owner. The original result of this article is that the required controller parameters are approximated based on some canonical model structure and analysis of the hydrodynamic properties of a wide class of ships. Another novelty is the use of a fully verified, realistic numerical hydrodynamic model of the ship as a simulation model as well as a basis for deriving a simplified model structure suitable for controller design. The preliminary results obtained indicate good performance of the proposed ADRC autopilot and provide prospects for its successful implementation on a real ship.
Highlights
A good design of a ship and her steering control system is crucial for the safety and efficiency, or fuel economy, of the operation process
Sections and the general idea of the Active Disturbance Rejection Control (ADRC) system, simulation sented in the previous tests Based were carried using the MATLAB/Simulink environment
On the out mathematical model of the ship preThe diagram of the and ADRC-based angle control system is shown in sented in block the previous
Summary
A good design of a ship and her steering control system is crucial for the safety and efficiency, or fuel economy, of the operation (navigation) process. It includes coursechanging manoeuvres to reach the straight-line section (leg) of the route according to the voyage plan or as a part of collision avoidance In both of these tasks, the steering optimization by the proper selection of an autopilot structure/design and the tuning of its parameters can render better energy efficiency. We can often define them in terms of classical optimisation, specifying an objective function as spread on the controller’s model structure and parameters and minimising/maximising it to obtain the ‘optimal’ design Such an optimality appears, to be mostly local, for very specific conditions of the ship and environment, and the control often fails as it is very sensitive to model uncertainty and disturbances, as with PID controllers and other controllers designed using so-called optimal control techniques [13,14,15].
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