C ONTROLLING CRANE SYSTEMS

Evagoras Makridis, Christakis Kallis, Argyrios Zolotas

I NTRODUCTION
CRANES are one of the most important elements
in global economy, vital in applications such as
construction, bridge building, commerce (ports),
loading/lifting operations etc.
Controlling cranes is a demanding and challeng-
ing task. Here in the School of Engineering, we
hold a 3-D crane system i.e. a small scale indus-
trial overhead crane version used for lifting and
moving payloads. A realistic example of such a
crane, in this building, exists in the Siemens Gas
Turbine hall (ground floor).
Crane control relies on a trade-off between the re-
sponse and transportation time and oscillations of
the payload. Factors that affects the operation of
such system can be moving platforms (e.g. ships),
payload mass/inertia, wind (for exterior cranes)
etc. Currently, we are looking into crane system
modeling and the effect of uncertainty on simple
controllers and their performance.
School of Engineering
R ELATED W ORK
Work has started as part of an Erasmus exchange In [1], Ramli et al. presents a comprehensive review of crane control strategies (including boom and
between Cyprus University of Technology and tower crane) and they discuss the latest research works during the years from 2000 to 2016 (highlighting
University of Lincoln. various crane types and control issues).
The authors in [2] studied neighboring optimal trajectories to ensure robustness of the time-optimal
control calculated for the nonlinear model. In addition they use an LQ controller to supervise the control
process and to eliminate unwanted properties of the optimal trajectory. This forms a rather complex
control methodology.
In [3], a linear quadratic Model Predictive Control (MPC) was implemented on an educational crane
control system for lab demonstration. A highly nonlinear mathematical model was derived by using
the Lagrangian approach as well as physical properties of the actuators. Some linearisation techniques
for linear control were seen.
In [4] Iles et al. a real-time Model Predictive Control (MPC) for a 3D tower crane was proposed, based
on subsequent solving of three quadratic programs. The authors considered the three motions of the 3D
tower crane as separate subsystems with coupling.
W HAT WE ARE WORKING ON
The 3D crane control is a really important and interesting task and it has applications in various fields of
Figure 1: 3D crane system the industry. For this reason robust techniques must be investigated and applied for better performance
and stability. Planned tasks to explore are:

• Mathematical modelling using electromechanical parameters of actuators.

S YSTEM M ODEL • Matlab simulink model.
Figure 2 presents the schematic (free-body) diagram of the 3-D crane system [5]. The quantities of • Robust and adaptive control design.
interest are: • Real-time control application using the real crane system of the laboratory.
• Results and comparison with the current state of the art.
1. xw denotes the distance of the rail with the cart from the center of the construction frame.

2. yw denotes the distance of the cart from the center of the rail.
3. R denotes the length of the lift-line.
4. α denotes the angle between the y axis and the lift-line.
5. β denotes the angle between the negative direction on the z axis and the projection of the lift-line
onto the xz plane.
R EFERENCES
[1] Liyana Ramli, Z. Mohamed, Auwalu M. Abdullahi, H.I. Jaafar, and Izzuddin M. Lazim. Control strategies for
crane systems: A comprehensive review. Mechanical Systems and Signal Processing, 95:1 – 23, 2017.
[2] M. Pauluk. Optimal and robust control of 3d crane. PrzeglÄĚd Elektrotechniczny, R. 92, nr 2:206–212, 2016.
[3] P. Breuning and B. Egardt. Linear model predictive control of a 3d tower crane for educational use double
master thesis. 2015.
[4] Š. Ileš, J. Matuško, and F. Kolonić. Real-time predictive control of 3d tower crane. In 2014 IEEE 23rd International
Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE), pages 224–230, June 2014.
[5] Inteco. 3DCrane User’s Manual. Inteco.

C ONTACT I NFORMATION
Dr Argyrios Zolotas
Web http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/azolotas
Email azolotas@lincoln.ac.uk
Figure 2: 3D crane system: coordinates and forces