Research on the heading control mode of the thruster-assisted mooring system

Thruster-assisted mooring system is a positioning system that consists of mooring lines and thrusters.The heading control mode of the system is studied.In this mode,rather than controlling all 3 DOF(surge,sway,yaw) motion,only the heading of the platform will be controlled.To study the performance of the heading control mode,time domain simulations are carried out.The results indicate that under normal environmental conditions,comparing with being positioned by the mooring system,the control of the yaw motion can be improved significantly by heading control mode;and comparing with the control of all 3 DOF motions,the heading control mode consumes much less energy.Heading control mode is one of the control strategies of the thruster-assisted mooring system,with which the platform can be positioned with high accuracy and low power consumption.