An Analysis of Marine vessel Manoeuvrability Using a Modified Linear Quadratic Regulating Controller Design to Enhance Performance

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Lagos

2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Ship stability is one of the most valuable operational situations of ships and provides essential information on the weather conditions, safety and control ability of the ship. To guarantee a ship's sustainability, there is an urgent need to analyze and apply the results of vessel manoeuvring dynamics and establish the controller’s design thereby assuring the ship’s performance. To address the problem, this study introduces a modified form of the linear quadratic regulator (LQR) controller design to control and influence the random fluctuations in the system state measurements stable results were obtained in the various cases that were tested. The controller was robust enough to deal with measurement noise under varying circumstances. Considering the vessel's turning radius bend of 300 millimeters and the completion of a full turn in 3.5 minutes, the performance of the controller tested in a real situation reveals that increasing the controller gains through the values of the Q and R (quadratic regulator) matrices affected different parts of the response. Furthermore, from the simulation, for every 1 second of simulation time, we have 20.85 seconds of real-time. The real-time plots provided are 0.24 seconds of simulation time. Also, the higher value of the Q matrix coefficients stimulated a faster response since the feedback gain increases commensurately. The result is significant as it enables naval architects to easily manoeuvre vessels in a predictable way which is the effect of this controller design.

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