Research on Improvement of the Propulsion Maneuver System of SHINKAI6500

The response of the thrusters installed in “SHINKAI 6500” at present is very slow and those thrusters are individually manipulated manually because reduction of radiation noise and course keeping stability were considered most important when those thrusters are designed, so that it is not possible to operate the complicated motion.So, this study was carried out in order to develop the maneuvering system that enables advanced vehicle movements using rapid reaction thrusters and Doppler sonar.In this paper, the result of real sea test at which SHINKAI6500 was equipped with the test thrusters experimentally is described. It was proved that the test thruster has enough power and rapidity of the response and that it enables the ship to do the stationkeeping in surge direction at the very high accuracy by automatic control using optimal control and Ossman's adaptive control algorithm.