Study On Test And Simulation System Of Ship Autopilot

Ship autopilot is the important equipment to control the course of the ship. Its performance directly affects the safe、economical and efficient driving of the ship. However, the ship autopilot can’t work properly on the land and adjust the dynamic performance according to the real environment due to the lack of the real rudder angle feedback signal and the real heading signal, which cause the difficulties in the research, manufacture and maintaining of the ship autopilot. So the paper designs a test and simulation system of the ship autopilot by the use of hybrid simulation based on the actual autopilot.The paper gives specific solutions to deal with the ship autopilot working on the land properly. First, using PLC and the stepper motor make a rudder angle generating device which is used to replace the practical complex large hydraulic steering gear system. Connect the auto navigator forming a feedback loop of the rudder angle. Then the paper briefly introduces the basic theory about establishing ship motion model. Whatever, according to the theory, the paper constructs the ship motion mathematical model as a dynamic link library form. According to the IEC61162 protocols,analyse the way of simulation software communicate to the ship autopilot,and design the ship autopilot simulation and test system.The system can choose ship model,set the environment,draw the ship track,calculate the course-optimal control of performance indicators,and have the ability to make a comprehensive testing and evaluation to the ship autopilot.Finally, test the entire system comprehensively. The test includes the test of the whole hardware, ship rotation experiments,ship Z-shaped experiments, the course control experiments, and evaluating the control effect of the shipautopilot. The test result shows that the system performance is stable, which can realistically simulate the autopilot steering gear dynamic change of rudder angle and rudder angle under the control of ship heading and track changes. The simulation system can be used in the process of autopilot’s manufacturing,replace some maritime experiment,detect errors to repair the autopilot,and be a teaching instrument to train the students.