Marine propeller dynamics modeling using a frequency domain approach

This paper reports the modeling, identification and experimental validation of a marine propeller dynamic model. In fact, the existing models well reproduce propeller thrust and torque, but only at low dynamics. In practice, the rate of change of propeller rotational speed is then limited by the thruster controllers to avoid unmodeled phenomena. Otherwise important tracking error can occur during transient responses. In both cases, the dynamic performances of the whole controlled system are limited. To avoid this difficulty, we propose a dynamic model for marine propeller based on a frequency domain approach using a Wiener-Hammerstein model. The identification is carried out using a harmonic study of the asymptotic response of the model to a sinusoidally varying input. Simulations and experiments are performed to evaluate the performances of the proposed model.