A fault tolerant control strategy for ship stabilization using ballast systems

This paper tackles the problematic of ship stabilization using a fault tolerant control strategy. The control strategy can be implemented to use optimal amounts of resources, during the loading and unloading operations on docked vessels. A mathematical model linking the ship´s positioning and orientation with the forces and moments exerted upon the hull is required in order to develop an optimal control strategy for the ship´s stabilizing ballast systems. This strategy is designed using graph theory concepts, taking into account the ballast system´s topology, we can generate an optimal command sequence in respect to minimum energy consumption and tolerance to faults.