Preliminary experiments in the model-based dynamic control of marine thrusters

This paper presents experiments with a new algorithm for the unsteady (transient) thrust control bladed-propeller marine thrusters. Comparative experiments over a wide range of unsteady operating conditions with three different thrust control algorithms demonstrate the model-based control algorithm to offer transient thrust-control performance superior to that of its nonmodel-based counterpart. The use of improved unsteady thrust control on underwater vehicles promises to reduce the well-documented limit-cycling of dynamically-positioned marine vehicle position during low-speed manuevering.