Thrust Allocation of Dynamic Positioning based on Improved Differential Evolution Algorithm

Thrust allocation is an important part of the marine dynamic positioning system (DPS). It distributes the command forces and moments from the controller to the individual thruster. An improved different evolution algorithm (IDE) is proposed to solve the thrust allocation problem. This algorithm uses the new mutation operator and terminal condition. Simulation results show that this algorithm can solve thrust allocation problem well and the IDE algorithm has faster searching speed and stronger capability of global search compared with the traditional differential evolution (DE) algorithm. The IDE algorithm can find better optimal solution to make the dynamic positioning system less power consumption.