Gyroscopic stabilisation of rolling motion in simplified marine hull model

Excessive rolling motions of marine vessel will bring discomfort and safety issue to the passengers and crew. Rolling motion reduction can prevent cargo damage, improve crew efficiency and provide comfort for the passengers. The objective of this research is to investigate the use of gyroscope in the stabilisation of rolling motion of a marine ship hull through simulation. Mathematical models of a simple marine ship hull and two gyrostabiliser models, i.e. natural- and controller-driven gyrostabilizer were established. The respective MATLAB Simulink block diagrams were constructed. Simulation results show that both natural- and controller-driven gyrostabiliser are able to reduce the rolling motion through the gyroscopic effect of spinning flywheel, provided that the generated angular momentum is sufficiently large. The percentage of roll reduction is affected by wave frequency but not the wave magnitude. Besides, controller-driven gyrostabiliser is able to reduce rolling motion more efficiently compared to the natural-driven gyrostabiliser. The excess energy consumed by the driven gyrostabiliser controller can be compensated by the lower energy consumption rate of the spinning flywheel with lower rotational speed.