Roll Damping and Heading Control of a Marine Vessel by Fins-Rudder VSC

This paper investigates the design of an integrated control system for course keeping and roll damping of a multipurpose naval vessel by means of active fins and rudder. The ship dynamics is described through a nonlinear multivariable model which takes into account the hydrodynamic couplings among sway, roll and yaw due to both the wave effect and the control devices, i.e., rudder and active fins. A stability analysis of the zero dynamics along with the design of a MIMO variable structure control law is provided. Simulation results are given to corroborate the theoretical analysis.