A Study of Trim Tab Management System for an USV and a Small Boat

Abstract

In order for the ship to operate safely on the water surface, proper engine and efficient linearity are required. The engine provides adequate power to allow the vessel to travel to the desired destination, and efficient linearity helps reduce fuel consumption and safe operation of the fluid. Because large ships are heavy and the length of the hull is long, even if they are operated at high speed in the early stage, the bow does not go up and the stern is not pitch down. On the contrary, the small ship has a shorter hull length than the weight of the hull, which causes the bow to go up and the stern to go down at the beginning of the operation. In this case, the biggest problem is that the bottom of a small boat and the water surface are contacted is widened, causing a problem of a lot of resistance. When the hull resistance becomes large, the fuel consumption becomes large. In addition, it causes problems such as greenhouse gas emissions. The equipment used at this time is the trim tab. The trim tab is the hardware for improving the posture control and navigation performance of the small boat, and is mostly operated manually. In this paper, we designed and implemented Smart Trim Tab Management System which can provide optimum posture control and navigation performance according to the hull posture by applying artificial intelligence to manually operated trim tab system.