Tracking controller for ship manoeuvring in a shallow or confined fairway: Design, comparison and application

Abstract

The present study introduces a new tracking controller for fast-time simulation in shallow or confined water. The performance of the developed controller is investigated by simulation studies with a container ship in a confined tidal environment. Firstly, a novel tracking controller was designed and applied in a fast-time manoeuvring simulator with a mathematical manoeuvring model identical to that of the full mission bridge simulators of Flanders Hydraulics Research (FHR). Prior to the simulation runs, a statistical AIS-analysis was carried out to determine the reference speeds along the trajectory. Then, the proposed controller was tested via navigation simulations on the Western Scheldt River, flowing through the Netherlands and Belgium, with realistic environment scenarios. Comparisons were conducted between the proposed tracking controller and the present prescience model based tracking controller (PMTC) used in the simulator both in calm water conditions and in tidal conditions covering a full tidal cycle. The results show that both tracking controllers are able to provide satisfactory tracking performance. Nevertheless, compared with PMTC, the proposed tracking controller reveals some important advantages such as a better speed control, a significant reduction of the computational cost, etc. In conclusion, the designed tracking controller can be applied for fast-time simulation in shallow or confined water with high accuracy.