Multi-level model predictive control for all-electric ships with hybrid power generation

Power availability to preserve propulsion is a vital issue in the shipping industry which relies on persistent power generation and maintaining the stability of the power and propulsion system. Since the introduction of on-board all-electric Direct Current Power and Propulsion Systems (DC-PPS) with hybrid power generation, which are more...

A reduced-order model of a solid oxide fuel cell stack for model predictive control

The maritime industry is actively exploring alternative fuels and drive train technology to reduce the emissions of hazardous air pollutants and greenhouse gases. High temperature solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) represent a promising technology to generate electric power on ships from a variety of renewable fuels with high efficiencies and no...

Computational reduction of optimal hybrid vehicle energy management

Pontryagin’s Minimum Principle is a way of solving hybrid powertrain optimal energy management. This paper presents an improvement of a classical implementation. The core of this improvement consists in relaxing the tolerance on some intermediate steps of the algorithm in order to reduce the number of iterations and thereby reducing the...

Sizing and Control of a Hybrid Ship Propulsion System Using Multi-Objective Double-Layer Optimization

Ship hybridization has received some interests recently in order to achieve the emission target by 2050. However, designing and optimizing a hybrid propulsion system is a complicated problem. Sizing components and optimizing energy management control are coupled with each other. This paper applies a nested double-layer optimization...

Model predictive trajectory tracking control and thrust allocation for autonomous vessels

The maneuvering control of autonomous vessels has been under extensive investigations by academic and industrial communities since it is one of the primary steps towards enabling unmanned shipping. In this paper, a model predictive control (MPC) approach is presented for trajectory tracking control of vessels which takes into account the...

Model predictive maneuvering control and energy management for all-electric autonomous ships

Over the last few years, autonomous shipping has been under extensive investigation by the scientific community where the main focus has been on ship maneuvering control and not on the optimal use of energy sources. In this paper, the purpose is to bridge the gap between maneuvering control, energy management, and the control of the Power and...

Adaptive control for autonomous ships with uncertain model and unknown propeller dynamics

Motion control is one of the most critical aspects in the design of autonomous ships. During maneuvering, the dynamics of propellers as well as the craft hydrodynamical specifications experience severe uncertainties. In this paper, an adaptive control approach is proposed to control the motion and trajectory tracking of an autonomous vessel...