Dynamic positioning, system identification and control of marine vessels - based on Balchen model
Abstract
Dynamic Positioning (DP) is essential for ensuring the secure operation of marine vessels across different industries. Hence, it is important to use reliable models and accurate control techniques for these vessels.
The main objective of this study is to simplify the Balchen low frequency model and develop accurate control methods to perform simulation experiments on the simplified model.
The model is simplified by eliminating the drag and momentum coefficients, and its behavior is observed. A comparison between the simplified model and the original model is performed. Standard MPC, Reduced Size MPC, Simple MPC, Simple MPC with integral action, and LQ optimal control with integral action were selected as control methods. The performance of the controllers is evaluated using Integrated Absolute Error (IAE) and Total Variation (TV) indexes.
The simulation results shows that the simplified model is a three-double integrator model. The comparison between the simplified model and the original model gives almost identical behavior. Based on the experimental results and the evaluation indexes, the Simple MPC with integral action is chosen as the best control approach for the simplified model, although the Reduced Size MPC also performs well overall.