In this study, a motion control problem for the vessel towed by towing ship on the sea is considered. The towed vessel does not have self-control capabilities such that its course stability totally depends on the towing ship. Especially, in the narrow canal, river and congested harbor area, extreme tension is required during the towing operation. The authors, therefore, propose a new control system design method in which the rudder is activated to provide its maneuverability. Based on the leader following system configuration, a nonlinear mathematical model is derived and a backstepping control is designed. By experiment results with nonlinear control framework, the usefulness and effectiveness of the proposed strategy are presented.

In this study, a motion control problem for the vessels towed by tugboats or towing ships on the sea is considered. The towed vessel looks like the barge ship, which is used for many purposes. In these vessels, basically, the power propulsion system is not installed but just towed by a towing vessel such as tugboats with ropes and wires. It means that the motions of towed vessel are basically dependent on the tracking route of towing boat. Therefore, in some cases, undesirable and unpredictable motions may be made by environmental factors such as wave, wind attack and so on. As a result, a collision accident with others may occur during maneuvering situation. Based on these facts, the authors try to encourage the steering performance of the towed vessel by using controllable rudders without any propulsion system. In this study, especially, a controllable vessel with three rudders is considered, and a mathematical model is induced for the future study. The model is described as surge, sway motion and inertia moment by following the general representation method for the surface ship.

실습선 한바다호에 설치된 선박 조종성능 계측 시스템을 이용하여 타각, 선회방향, 속력 등 다양한 조건으로 수차례에 걸쳐 선회시험을 실시하였다. 이를 바탕으로 선회권, 조종성 지수, 신침로 거리 등을 산출하여 상호 비교하였고, 그 결과 IMO 조종성 기준(Maneuvering standards)을 잘 만족하고 있음을 확인하였다. 실습선 한바다호는 좌현으로 선회하는 경우 모든 타각에서 선회권이 작게 측정되었고, 타 선박과 비교하여 선회성 지수(K)와 추종성 지수(T)가 상대적으로 크게 나타났다. 따라서 선회과정에서 선회경은 다소 작아질 수 있으나, 전진거리가 길어질 수 있으므로 전방의 위험물 회피에 주의가 요구된다. 또한, 신침로가 30˚~90˚인 경우 신침로거리는 125m~300m로 측정되었다. 이러한 결과는 충돌회피와 항내조선 및 협수도 항해 시 선박을 보다 안전하게 조선하는데 매우 중요한 지표가 될 것으로 판단된다.