Feed-Forward compensation for the Reduction of Vibrations in Ship's Generators

Nowadays, any problem that leads to transportation delays in the shipping industry has a direct impact on global inflation, food shortage, and productive chains. Considering this, the reduction of torsional vibrations excited by load changes on a ship generator is required, as it leads to faster degradation and lower useful life of mechanical components. This paper studies the excitation of torsional vibrations on ship generators and proposes two strategies, bang-bang (BB) control and model predictive control (MPC) to reduce them. For this, a simplified electromechanical system of a carrier vessel is presented, and the strategies are applied to compensate for the torsional vibrations excited in the drivetrain. Simulation results compare the two proposed strategies with traditional PI controllers and show a reduction of torsional vibrations higher than 50% with respect to conventional non-compensative control strategies.