Fast ferry vertical accelerations reduction with active flaps and T-Foil

Abstract The research deals with the design and use of actuators to improve the seakeeping performances of a fast ferry. The interest of the research is now restricted to heaving and pitching motions, with heading sea. The ship has active control surfaces (flaps and T-foil). The paper presents a control-oriented model of these actuators, in SIMULINK. This model can be easily coupled with a SIMULINK model of the ship, furnishing a simulation environment for control studies. Using this facility, a study of control alternatives (moving the actuators) has been started. We include in the paper first results with conventional PID control, which are useful as reference for comparison purposes.