Research Of Intelligent Control Technology For Marine Azimuth Thruster

Marine azimuth thruster is one of most popular thruster devices, which is installedwidely on tugboats, engineering ships and special ships because of its high flexility, goodefficiency and low maintenance cost. However, the control of azimuth thruster have notresearch deeply yet, and the open loop control cannot satisfied with suitable precision as thenon-linear system. Thus it is vital significance to research the control system for marineazimuth thruster.The main research of this paper introduces the intelligent control theory into the marineazimuth thruster. The paper is constitute of3parts. In part1, it analyze azimuth thruster’sstructures, and imposing the MMG separated strategy to establish each mathematical modelswith physical theory, including rudder motor model, propeller force model, dynamical model,inertia model，glutinosity model, wind interrupts and current interrupts, etc. In part2, itinvolves3popular control strategies, such as PID control, fuzzy control and neural networkcontrol. This part includes control theories, calculating methods, applicable circumstancesand improved strategies with these3control ways. And in part3, as the fore-context marineazimuth thruster’s analysis, it establishes simplified models and simulations, and makes allmodel into a combined system, which is applied these3control strategies with the step inputsignals. Then compared the three responses, the paper is to find a best way to control themarine azimuth thruster.At the end of the paper, it summarize the simulation results of3control strategies, andtake proposals about the problems and the directions of further research.