Laboratory Facilities for Dynamic Positioning System

Dynamic positioning systems are widely installed in vessels specially those related to the offshore oil industry. Most of these ships require tests in ocean basin to predict their dynamic performance properly since the mathematical models are quite complex and some hydrodynamic phenomena have not been modeled yet. In this paper some aspects of an experimental facility set-up for tests with scale models with dynamic positioning system are described. It includes the topology of the experiment and details of components of the system. Preliminary experimental results are presented and compared with those obtained through digital simulation.