Motion Compensation System for a free floating Surface Effect Ship

This paper deals with vertical motion compensation, or motion damping, on a free-floating Surface Effect Ship (SES) at zero speed. The Motion Compensation System (MCS) works by varying the air cushion pressure of a Surface Effect Ship (SES) to minimize vertical motion due to sea waves. We present a control system which guarantees Global Exponential Stability for the closed-loop state space system and ultimately boundedness for the perturbed system. A study of the performance of the control system is demonstrated through model-test results of a 3 meter long SES.