Robust Rudder Roll Damping Control

The results of a systematic research to solve a specific ship motion control problem, simultaneous roll damping and course keeping using the rudder are presented in this thesis. The fundamental knowledge a priori is that rudder roll damping is highly sensitive to the model uncertainty, therefore H-infinity theory is used to deal with the problem. The necessary mathematical tools and the H-Infinity theory as the basis of controller design are presented in Chapter 2 and 3. The mu synthesis and the D-K iteration are introduced in Chapter 3. The ship dynamics and modeling technology are discussed in Chapter 4, two kinds of ship model have been obtained: linear ship model used for designing the controller and nonlinear model used for simulation. The ship model uncertainty is discussed in this chapter and so is a wave model because the ship's roll motion is caused by waves. Using an unstructured model of uncertainty, three controllers with different kind of control schemes are designed by the mixed sensitivity method in Chapter 5. Sea-way simulation results show that each of these controllers have good robust stability and performance. The roll damping reduction is above 35% for all of these controllers. Roll reduction of near 70% has been obtained by the cascade controller. Using structured model of uncertainty, a m controller is designed in Chapter 6. The good robust performance has been recognized in the simulation results. It is shown that the m controller has the best robust characteristics with respect to model uncertainty and the roll reduction is near 50% with an envelope of model perturbations.