Abstract: Reduction of roll and pitch motions is critical in improving the safety and operability of a ship. In this paper, a predictive controller for a ship equipped with two pairs of active fins is proposed for joint pitch-roll stabilization. The proposed controller is developed on the basis of ship motion and hydrodynamic force prediction (SMHFP). The SMHFP controller consists of a short-term predictor, a force estimator, and a fin angle allocator. The short-term predictor adopts an autoregressive (AR) approach and serves to forecast ship motions. Then, predicted ship motions are used in an external hydrodynamic force estimator to evaluate the expected stabilizing forces. Finally, the optimal attack angles for active fins are allocated based on external hydrodynamic forces forecasts. The control system of the stabilizing fins and SMHFP controller is integrated into the sea-keeping program. The program was developed based on a weakly nonlinear 2.5D method, which shows better efficiency and accuracy compared with conventional 2D and 3D methods. To evaluate the performance of the proposed controller, numerical simulations of the joint pitch-roll stabilization under various sea states were investigated on a ship model. The results suggest that the SMHFP controller shows satisfactory performance in reducing pitch and roll motions simultaneously.

Key words: Active fins, Joint pitch-roll stabilization, Predictive controller, Ship motion and hydrodynamic force prediction (SMHFP) controller

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