Modelling and Control of Offshore Marine Pipeline during Pipelay

Abstract A model suited for control tasks is developed for a submerged offshore pipe during the pipelay operation. The pipe is fixed in the touchdown point at the seabed in one end and attached to a pipelay vessel in the other end. The developed model is discrete and is on the form of the robot equation with minimal coordinates. Thus the methods of controller synthesis and stability analysis can be applied directly. The model constitutes a hyper redundant system and it is shown that this system is passive. A PID-controller has been suggested. The simulation results are in agreement with the theoretical results.