Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The main objective of this research proposal is to develop a methodology for the identification of the instantaneous hydrodynamic forces acting on a ship or an underwater water vehicle sailing at sea. The main hurdle to overcome is our inability to measure the input, so a relationship between output and input cannot be established. Instead, we have to take recourse to techniques which depend only on response measurements to identify the hydrodynamic model which govern the motion of the ship or the underwater vehicle. The approach which will be followed in this work is to use techniques, like the random decrement technique, to obtain the free response of the vehicle from its random response. neural networks can then be used to identify the hydrodynamic model in real time. Thus, the model can be updated as the navigation conditions change. Such a technique will provide better manoeuvring characteristics, more positioning precision, and safer working conditions.