Design of Ship’s Steering Servo Control System with Adjusting Tidal Current Effect

Abstract

A ship is turned by steering. Then the ship turns with constant angular velocity against the steering angle. However, the turning angular velocity is varied by ship’s speed. Furthermore, the ship’s turning performance is based on the speed against the water. This study designs steering control system to keep the constant turning angular velocity on the sea a tidal current. First, we inspect the variation of the turning angular velocity in regard of some ship’s speed. Second, the ship’s maneuverability is identified, which is expressed as Auto-Regressive eXogeneous (ARX) model, by each steering angle and each ship’s speed. Then the angular velocity of turning is controlled by applying Generalized Minimum Variance Control (GMVC) as one of predictive controls. Finally, the gain of GMVC controller is scheduled with the tidal current effect.