Abstract
This paper treats the method for designing the time optimal steering system that minimizes the steering time to turn a ship to an assigned angle. When this problem is synthesized by using the state space, the state vector representing the magnitude of the steering angle is bounded because the steering angle is limited in both of a magnitude and a rate. The general solution of this is obtained by using the maximum principle and the jump-condition, but, this problem is considered as a special case of that in the bounded state space. In this paper, applying the result of J.Y.S. Luh, the simple method to find the minimum time optimal control is shown, using this, the minimum time closed-loop controller is designed for the following steering system of ships;Td2θ/dt2+dθ/dt=Kδwhere θ is a turning angle, δ is a rudder angle, T is a constant which represents the quickness of response of ships, and K is a constant which represents the turning quality. Also, a simulation is tried using a digital computer and it is shown that this method can be applied to realize the optimal steering device in any ships.
