Control, Simulation, and Testbed Development for Improving Maritime Launch and Recovery Operations

This thesis presents various tools to improve motion compensation strategies in maritime launch and recovery: a 3D simulator to examine wave synchronization, a signal prediction algorithm for Go-NoGo states and a hardware set-up to simulate ship and wave motion. The simulator of towed body dynamics was advanced to model the wave interactions with the towed body as the body exits the water. Simulations were run to investigate the inclusion of wave synchronization in active heave compensation strategies where the hypothesis that wave synchronization would reduce variations in cable tension was not supported. The use of a signal prediction method that forecasts a periodic signal was explored for long-term predictions of a Go-NoGo state. For the development of laboratory equipment, a ship motion simulator was designed and built to emulate 5 degrees-of-freedom of ship motion. For producing waves, a design methodology was developed for the design of a plunger-type wavemaker.