Robust and Practical Control of An Automatic Gantry Crane System

1. BACKGROUND

Cranes are widely used to transport heavy loads and hazardous materials in shipyards, factories, nuclear installation, high-building construction and other industrial applications. Usually a skilful operator is responsible for operating the cranes. However, recently, the cranes have serious problems; acceleration/deceleration motion induces undesirable load swing. Such load swing usually degrades work efficiency and sometimes load damage and event safety accident. If the swing exceeds a proper limit, it must be damped or the operation must be stopped until the swing dies out. A low speed operation may also be used to avoid the load swing. Either option consumes time, which reduces the facility availability and productivity.

2. PURPOSE

Proposition of a robust and practical control for an automatic gantry crane system which has capability to move payload in a higher speed operation with no an excessive load swing, without the need of a skilful operator and robust to parameter variations.

3. PROPOSED AUTOMATIC GANTRY CRANE SYSTEM

Anti-swing Control

Fuzzy logic controller

Position Control Nominal characteristic trajectory X ref ( s ) + d dt PI u p NCTF Controller + +

Gantry crane

 ( s ) X ( s ) Block diagram of automatic gantry crane system Prototype diagram of automatic gantry crane system

4. PERFORMANCE OF THE PROPOSED GANTRY CRANE SYSTEM

80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Fuzzy logic controller NCTF controller 0.03

0.00

-0.03

Fuzzy + Fuzzy NCTF + Fuzzy 0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 -0.06

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 Time (sec) Time (sec)

5. CONCLUSIONS

It is shown that the proposed crane system has capability to move a payload from one point to another within minimum time and no excessive load swing without the need of a skilful operator.

Dr. Wahyudi Martono and Jamaludin Jalani Department of Mechatronics Engineering Kulliyyah of Engineering Internatonal Islamic University Malaysia Jalan Gombak 53100, Kuala Lumpur [email protected]