Disturbance rejection of offshore drilling platforms: An equivalent-input-disturbance-based dynamic positioning control method

Human reliability and the impact of control function allocation in the design of dynamic positioning systems

A dynamic positioning disturbance suppression method is presented for the offshore drilling platform based on the equivalent input disturbance (EID) approach in this paper. Firstly, the offshore drilling platform's low-frequency and wavefrequency motion components are separated by the Luenberger observer. Then a linear-quadratic regulator is designed to ensure the stability of the low-frequency motion closed-loop system. The EID approach is used to estimate and compensate for the unknown time-varying disturbances of the environment, thereby improving the disturbance suppression ability of the system. Simulation results of a supply vessel demonstrate the validity of the method.

SummaryThis paper addresses the numerical aspects of adaptive filtering (AF) techniques for simultaneous state and parameters estimation arising in the design of dynamic positioning systems in many areas of research. The AF schemes consist of a recursive optimization procedure to identify the uncertain system parameters by minimizing an appropriate defined performance index and the application of the Kalman filter (KF) for dynamic positioning purpose. The use of gradient‐based optimization methods in the AF computational schemes yields to a set of the filter sensitivity equations and a set of matrix Riccati‐type sensitivity equations. The filter sensitivities evaluation is usually carried out by the conventional KF, which is known to be numerically unstable, and its derivatives with respect to unknown system parameters. Recently, a novel square‐root approach for the gradient‐based AF by the method of the maximum likelihood has been proposed. In this paper, we show that various square‐root AF schemes can be derived from only two main theoretical results. This elegant and simple computational technique replaces the standard methodology based on direct differentiation of the conventional KF equations (with their inherent numerical instability) by advanced square‐root filters (and its derivatives as well). As a result, it improves the robustness of the computations against round off errors and leads to accurate variants of the gradient‐based AFs. Additionally, such methods are ideal for simultaneous state estimation and parameter identification because all values are computed in parallel. The numerical experiments are given. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Multiple Model Adaptive Wave Filter for Dynamic Ship Positioning

This paper presents the design of a linear quadratic analog tracker (LQAT) based on the observer–Kalman-filter identification (OKID) method and the design of a modified functional observer-based equivalent input disturbance (EID) estimator for unknown square–non-square singular analog systems with unknown input and output disturbances. First, an equivalent mathematical model of the singular analog system is presented to simulate the time response of continuous-time linear singular analog systems to arbitrary inputs via the model conversion method. Then, for the unknown singular analog system, it constructs a linear quadratic analog tracker with state feedback and feed-forward gains based on the off-line OKID method. Furthermore, it extends the design methodology of the EID estimator for strictly proper regular systems with unknown matched–mismatched input and output disturbances to proper regular systems. It is important to mention that the newly developed modified functional observer for proper systems is used to estimate the unknown EID of singular analog systems and that the constraints on the dimensions of unknown disturbances can be eliminated by using the newly proposed EID estimation method. The contributions of this paper can be listed as follows: (1) based on both the OKID method and the discrete-to-continuous model conversion, the simulation of the time responses of the continuous-time linear singular models (which are not feasible using existing MATLAB toolboxes) become feasible; (2) for effective control of the unknown singular analog system, an off-line OKID method is proposed to design an LQAT with state feedback and feed-forward gains; and (3) based on the newly developed modified functional observer for the reduced-order proper regular system, the original EID estimator in the literature is newly extended to estimate the EID from the unknown strictly proper singular analog system, without the original dimensional constraints of the disturbances. It is important to mention that the disturbances of interest can be unknown matched–mismatched input and output disturbances.

Adaptive fuzzy controller design for dynamic positioning system of vessels

This work is focused on the active vibration control of piezoelectric cantilever beam, where an adaptive feedforward controller (AFC) is utilized to reject the vibration with unknown multiple frequencies. First, the experiment setup and its mathematical model are introduced. Due to that the channel between the disturbance and the vibration output is unknown in practice, a concept of equivalent input disturbance (EID) is employed to put an equivalent disturbance into the input channel. In this situation, the vibration control can be achieved by setting the control input be the identified EID. Then, for the EID with known multiple frequencies, the AFC is introduced to perfectly reject the vibration but is sensitive to the frequencies. In order to accurately identify the unknown frequencies of EID in presence of the random disturbances and un-modeled nonlinear dynamics, the time–frequency-analysis (TFA) method is employed to precisely identify the unknown frequencies. Consequently, a TFA-based AFC algorithm is proposed to the active vibration control with unknown frequencies. Finally, four cases are given to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed TFA-based AFC algorithm by experiment.

An adaptive fuzzy controller for dynamic positioning (DP) system is designed. The controller utilizes Backstepping algorithm as the adaptive law and uses a fuzzy system for approximating the disturbances and uncertainties. The proposed adaptive fuzzy controller is proven to be uniform bounded in the sense of Lyapunov. Simulation results show that DP vessel with the adaptive fuzzy controller would be more adaptive with environmental interference and ship parametric uncertainty.

Precise dynamic positioning of autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) faces significant challenges because of actuator nonlinearities such as input saturation and backlash, which degrade system performance and stability in subsea operations. This work proposes a disturbance observer-based event-triggered prescribed-time dynamic positioning (DOB-ETPTDP) control framework to address these issues. The scheme reformulates the AUV kinematics as a dynamic position error system, modeling actuator nonlinearities as a bounded lumped disturbance. A key innovation is the prescribed-time disturbance observer that ensures rapid and accurate disturbance estimation, enhancing robustness against unknown actuator dynamics. A prescribed-time backstepping-based control law uses these estimates, to guarantee the asymptotic convergence of the dynamic position error to zero, independent of initial conditions. An adaptive prescribed-time event-triggered mechanism further optimizes control efficiency by reducing update rates and preventing Zeno behavior. Numerical simulations verified the effectiveness of the proposed DOB-ETPTDP scheme. In terms of convergence speed, the proposed method achieved improvements of approximately 55% and 67% compared with the sliding mode and backstepping approaches, respectively. Regarding computational complexity, the proposed method reduced the average computational load by about 20%. Moreover, the average data transmission ratio was significantly reduced, conserving more than 65% of the communication resources relative to the backstepping strategy. Rigorous stability analysis validated the theoretical guarantees, and extensive simulations confirmed that the proposed DOB-ETPTDP approach ensures high-accuracy dynamic positioning with enhanced robustness under complex actuator constraints.

Robust adaptive NN control of dynamically positioned vessels under input constraints

• A new control logic for the SCMSHPD system under low meteorological conditions was proposed. • Performance of the SCMSHPD system operating under the new control logic were analyzed. • The effects of the waste heat recovery on the combined drying system under different meteorological parameters were obtained. • Drying process of the combined drying system was optimized. To solve the problem that the high drying temperature demand could not be met when combined drying system operated under low ambient temperature and weak solar irradiance, a new control logic of the solar combined multi-heat source heat pump drying (SCMSHPD) system was proposed and its simulation model was established. By modifying its operating strategy, the SCMSHPD system achieved a higher drying temperature under low environment temperature and weak irradiance, which ensured the implementation of the drying process. The simulation results was verified through experimental study. Additionally, to address the issue of significant heat loss of the exhaust air, waste heat recovery was implemented and its impact on the system’s operating characteristics was analyzed. At last, the drying process was optimized due to the significant improvement of the specific moisture extraction rate ( SMER ) and the system performance was further improved. The results showed that the errors in coefficient of performance ( COP ), energy consumption, and SMER between the experimental and simulation results were 4.04%, 1.84% and 1.53% respectively, which verified the reliability of the simulation model. In October, the COP of the SCMSHPD system without waste heat recovery was 3.66% higher than that of the ASHPD system, but with the decrease of ambient temperature and solar irradiance, the COP of the combined drying system increased by 5.86% in December, demonstrating the advantage of the SCMSHPD system with the new control logic under low meteorological parameters. The waste heat recovery could not improve the system performance of the SCMSHPD system operating with the new control logic proposed, which caused a decrease of 1.06% and 1.19% in October and December respectively. However, the SMER was significantly increased by 70.67% and 12.78% respectively, and the energy consumption was significantly decreased by 41.33% and 10.94%. The results indicated that although waste heat recovery resulted in a slight decrease in system COP , the significant reduction in energy consumption and notable increase in SMER demonstrated a marked improvement in the overall system performance. Due to the significant increase of the SMER , the drying time was shortened, which caused an increase of 1.77% in COP in October. With meteorological parameters became lower, the COP get a bigger increase of 3.34%. Therefore, it could be concluded that the combination of waste heat recovery and shortened drying time could effectively improve the system performance, and the lower the meteorological parameters, the greater the improvement in the system performance. This study can provide important guidance for the selection of control logic and the optimization of the drying process for the SCMSHPD system under low meteorological parameters.

A robust adaptive NN-based output feedback control scheme is presented for a dynamic positioning ship with uncertainties and unknown external disturbances. We tackle the problem that velocity vector of a ship is not available by employing a high-gain observer, and develop the proposed control approach by combing vectorial backstepping with dynamic surface control approach, which is simpler and easier to implement in engineering practice. The neural network (NN) approximation technique is used to compensate for the uncertainties and unknown external disturbances, and it removes the requirement for the prior knowledge about the vessel parameters and external disturbances. Also, it is demonstrated that the proposed control strategy can force the position and yaw angle of a dynamic positioning ship to approach the desired point while guaranteeing all singles of the designed closed-loop dynamic positioning system semi-globally uniformly ultimately bounded by means of the Lyapunov function. Simulation results of a supply ship illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Performance Improvement of Professional Printing Systems: from theory to practice Markets demand continuously for higher quality, higher speed, and more energy-efficient professional printers. In this thesis, control strategies have been developed to improve the performance of both professional inkjet and laser printers. Drop-on-Demand (DoD) inkjet printing is considered as one of the most promising printing technologies. It offers several advantages including high speed, quiet operation, and compatibility with a variety of printing media. Nowadays, it has been used as low-cost and efficient manufacturing technology in a wide variety of markets. Although the performance requirements, which are imposed by the current applications, are tight, the future performance requirements are expected to be even more challenging. Several requirements are related to the jetted drop properties, namely, drop velocity, drop volume, drop velocity consistency, productivity, and reliability. Meeting the performance requirements is restricted by several operational issues that are associated with the design and operation of inkjet printheads. Major issues that are usually encountered are residual vibrations in and crosstalk among ink channels. This results in a poor printing quality for high-speed printing. Given any arbitrary bitmap, the main objective is to design actuation pulses such that variations in the velocity and volume of the jetted drops are minimized. Several model-based feedfoward control techniques using an existing model are implemented to generate appropriate input pulses for the printhead. Although the implementation of the model-based techniques shows a considerable improvement of the printhead performance compared with the current performance, further improvements are still necessary. We observe that besides the pulse shape the state of the ink surface at the nozzle plate (speed, position) at the start of the pulse influences the drop velocity considerably. This state at firing depends also on previous pixels in the bitmap of the image. Consequently, any pulse design has to guarantee almost the same initial state when firing a drop. Based on these facts, a model-free optimization scheme is developed to minimize the drop velocity variations taking into account the bitmap information. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the optimized pulses. Laser printing systems are highly depending on the appropriate combination of several design factors so as to become functional in a desired working range. The physical printing process involves multiple temperature set points at different places, precise electro-magnetic conditions, transfer of toner through certain pressures and layouts, and many other technical considerations. In the laser printing system there are several challenging issues and unknown disturbances. They originate from different sources, such as the printer itself (unknown phenomena appear, disturbances that are not foreseen, wear, contamination, failures, bugs), the environment of the system (power supply variations, temperature, humidity, vibrations), and the printing media (weight, coating, thermal properties, humidity characteristics, and initial temperature). These issues have a negative effect on the stability and performance of the laser printing system. The objective is to design a control scheme to achieve printing quality requirements and a high productivity. Good printing quality means that the fusing temperature should track a certain reference signal at different operating conditions. Based on the printing system behavior, we propose two different control schemes to cope with the large parameter variations and disturbances, namely, a Model Reference Adaptive Controller (MRAC) and a nonlinear (scheduled) observer-based output feedback control scheme. Both control techniques yield considerable performance improvements compared with the present industrial controller.

Sliding mode control unified with the uncertainty and disturbance estimator for dynamically positioned vessels subjected to uncertainties and unknown disturbances

A study is performed to determine whether Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) platforms can be dynamically positioned by the use of forces derived from ocean currents. The dynamic positioning characteristics of a 40-MWe spar buoy configured plant are simulated by computer solution of the equations of motion. The dynamic positioning system consists of two large vertical vanes attached to the plant's cold-water pipe. The vanes act as underwater sails and, where the current has a vertical speed gradient, may be operated such that the resulting hydrodynamic force and plant velocity have components directed upstream to the surface current. Forces on and motions of the plant are determined for operations in Hawaiian currents and in the Gulf Stream. The dynamic positioning method is shown to be theoretically feasible.