Control Strategies for Marine Gyrostabilizers

This paper examines various control strategies for a marine gyrostabilizer system, including passive and derivative-based control methods and proposes two new marine gyrostabilizer control strategies: reaction wheel and unrestricted gimbal control. A numerical model is developed, and simulations of a 20-m monohull boat, in irregular beam waves, is presented, based on the control objective of minimizing the resultant excitation moments on the vessel. With limited literature on the subject of marine gyrostabilizers, this paper is intended to convey the state of the art, presenting the governing equations of motions, in addition to presenting new marine gyrostabilizer control strategies, which may be able to further improve their performance.