Gain Scheduling Control of a Combined Diesel or Gas Ship Propulsion System with Parameter-Dependent Delay

This paper presents the main features of a combined diesel or gas ship propulsion system and a control strategy to be applied to its velocity channel. Operating limits, saturations and parameter-dependent delays make the system dynamic behavior highly nonlinear. The main objective is to control the ship velocity by using identification techniques and a combination of Smith predictor with a gain scheduling control method. The aim is to meet the specified time-domain performance with disturbance rejection over the entire operating range. Numerical results clearly show the advantages of using the proposed control technique.