MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF ENGINEERING PROBLEMS

Vol.1, No.1, 2014, pp.15-20

http://dx.doi.org/10.18280/mmep.010204

EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF HEAVE COMPENSATION

SYSTEM FOR MARINE CRANE
Yougang Sun, Haiyan Qiang, Kerong Yang, Qinglan Chen, Guowen Dai* and Mian Dong

College of Logistic Engineering, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China.

Email: ygsun@shmtu.edu.cn

ABSTRACT

In order to analysis the performances of the marine crane and verify the stability of heave compensation control algorithm
and examine the actual control effects, an experimental heave compensation system for marine crane had been built
according to working principles and composition structure of real marine crane. This system is mainly composed of four
parts which includes detecting system, driving system, control system and mechanical executive system. There are two
control methods in the design of control system which includes DSP controller and MATLAB/Simulink platforms. The
experimenters can pick up one of these controllers according to their demands. DSP controllers can also be used to the
learning and development of embedded programming while MATLAB/Simulink platforms can be easily used to
experimental tests with different control strategies. The common PID closed-loop control strategy, where the relative velocity
between the cargo and the being supplied vessel can be got in the high frequency and low frequency sea conditions, is applied
to this experimental system which verified the feasibility of this system effectively.

Keywords: Heave compensation, Marine crane, Designing and development of experiments.

1. INTRODUCTION system not only can simulate the real operation of crane
system, and is very convenient for all kinds of test and
Marine crane is essential to Marine engineering adjustment of the algorithm. In order to verify the feasibility
equipment’s [1]. In order to fully exploit the marine resources of the system, the basic PID control algorithm is applied to
and obtain sustainable development of marine resource, we the system, and the experimental results are obtained.
should ensure the safety of the working crane at sea. The
working marine crane is affected by the wave load which
would produce complicated nonlinear dynamic responses for 2. BASIC PRINCIPLE OF THE HEAVE
the cargoes and cause accidents [2].For example, due to the COMPENSATION SYSTEM
wave (ups and downs), the cargoes would crash to the deck
and cause safety accidents. Because of the complexity of the
When marine crane operate with the marine environmental
working environment, to achieve the safe and efficient
impact, waves, load, hanging system and the hull will
control is faced with many difficulties. So, compensation of
produce coupling effect. Hanging system will occur nonlinear
this kind of control system has become a focus of research. In
dynamic multi body motion. This non-linear dynamic
recent years, many scholars put forward the concept of active
response would pose a great threat to the safe operation.
heave compensation system [3, 4]. The heave compensation
Especially in the heave direction, the collision of the downing
refers to the correction and compensation of the ship’s
object and the sudden rise of the deck tendered by the wave
fluctuation caused by the waves. Scholars have put forward
may result major accidents.
various heave compensation control strategy, such as
When study the so-called “automatic soft landing”
adaptive control, fuzzy PID and sliding-mode control and
controlling strategy (also known as the heave compensation),
neural network [5-9]. But considering the nonlinear and
control the speed of lifting cargo in heave direction to make
coupling phenomenon existing in the actual system, the
the speed of the goods relative to the supply ship be constant.
practical of these control strategies remain to be further
Marine crane operate supply work on the sea. As shown in
tested. Experiment method has become indispensable tool in
Figure1. The respectively speed of supply ship and the supply
a system feature analysis, controller design and stability
verification. Based on the above reasons, this paper designed ship in heave diction should be and , Hoists to the rate
and developed an experiment system of heave compensation
system, which provides a great convenience for validation of decline of the global coordinate should be . Hoist
and implementation of the related control strategies. The

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speed with respect to the tendered should be , Rated respect to the supply ship in heave direction should be .

speed of recharge should be .Crane relative speed with

Figure 1. Heave compensation system

When there is no heave compensation: Introduce the compensate speed to make the speed of
weight relative to the rate of decline tender has nothing to do

(1) with the relative motion of two ships that is , the

weights can be put down by a crane on a steady supply ship
When a heave compensation exist, compensation to achieve heave compensation.
objectives should be

3. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF HEAVE

(2) COMPENSATION EXPERIMENT SYSTEM

Setting compensation speed be , the speed of weight According to the actual principle and structure of active
should be : heave compensation system in ship cranes, heave
compensation experimental system designed in this paper
consists of detection systems, drive systems, control systems
(3) and mechanical systems, as shown in Figure 2. Where use
DSP controller or MATLAB / Simulink software platform for
(4) control respectively in the control systems which have better
flexibility and agility. DSP controller enables embedded
Comparative Formula (1) and (2), the relationship between development and be widely used in mature products.
the compensation speed and the movement of full should be MATLAB / Simulink software platform can be easily carried
out experiments to test various control strategies which are
more suitable for use in the study.
(5)

Figure 2. Experimental system composition diagram

The principle of system control experiments basic is: to the tender of the heave movement. Fixed one hand of the
Equivalent relative motion of the tender and the supplied ship rope sensor on the hoist and the other hand to the analog

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supply ship deck motion together with board, real-time As shown in Figure 4, using motion sensors to detect the
measure the hoist and the relative speed of tender. Interface speed of incremental rope weights, with a resolution of
into the control system by DSP internal quadrature pulse 0.02mm / pulse, differential output to enhance anti-jamming
signal acquisition capture after sensor signal be processed by capability. Since the switch signal quadrature signal and limit
the signal conditioning circuit.DSP speed PWM output pulse switch sensors for TTL level, while the DSP IO port can
signal as well as continue to collect the rope convert sensor accept 3.3V COMS level signals, and therefore need to do
signals into the relative velocity and compared with the target their level conversion, the design uses 74LVC4245
speed .Seek error rate and the error rate changes and then completed three level road signal conversion, see Figure 5.
through the control algorithm to convert the output PWM
Pulse speed signal. Passes control servo motor servo motor
drive the next cycle reducer and gear train, driven reel close,
put the rope to achieve control of the hoist.

3.1 Machinery and driving part

Mechanical main part is the skeleton of the entire

experiment platform which implements the structural design
based on the composition of the official marine crane,
including reducer, gear train, rolls, pulleys, ropes and other
lifting frame. Lifting device component, considering the
relevant structure size, carrying capacity and connectivity
requirements. Prototype mechanical system shown in Figure
3:

Figure 4. Sensor signal transfer

3.3 DSP and MATLAB/Simulink real-time control

systems

(1) Real-time control system based on embedded DSP

control system of a high capacity for data processing and
real-time requirements, so the choice of DSP (TMS320F2812)
as a core component to control. 5V power supply for the
Sensor leads from the DSP development board. Motor during
operation , will produce a series of interference , in particular
interference signal produced by the sensor , will seriously
affect the signal acquisition speed , resulting in speed
1. reel; 2 lost power brakes; 3 rotary encoder; 4. reducer; 5 servo motor; 6
feedback signal generating error or an error . To ensure the
gear train; 7 terminal block.
normal operation of the system, the need for servo motor and
Figure 3. Mechanical transmission drive isolation.

3.2 Detection system

Figure 5. Optocoupler isolation signal circuit diagram

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 Design signal isolation and level shifting development
board, in-kind shown in Figure 6

Figure 6. Conversion board development

(2) MATLAB/Simulink real-time control systems Where k p is the proportion factor, ki is the integral time
Taking into account the experimental system studied in this
paper is mainly used to test advanced control methods , in constant, kd is the derivative time constant.
order to facilitate the implementation and commissioning of
the control algorithm , in addition to providing real-time 4.2 Control strategy
environment based on MATLAB RTW , it has the following
advantages: You can automatically generate high for different The main programs were written in DSP to control the
target platforms frequency of code; you can seamlessly with system and to realize the functions of system initialization,
MATLAB and Simulink, and therefore can easily achieve a control algorithm of computing, real-time monitoring ect.
variety of control algorithms ; provides a shortcut to the The timer interruption in DSP provided time flags to run the
application from design and direct way. main program.
MATLAB RTW supports multiple target platforms, this Figure 7 shows the workflow of this. The system began to
paper choose Window platform for real-time control under initialize when it is powered up; then, in order to illustrate
Real-time Windows Target (RTWT). It requires only a PC, conveniently, adjust the position of the cargo; entered the
you can achieve real-time control system, control the circulatory system to discriminate whether to stop or put the
minimum period of up to 1 ms. In addition to the PC cargo. If not, to read the parameters in sensors and to do
MATLAB RTW mounted environment, the control system preprocess to send the parameters into control algorithm.
further comprises a data acquisition card, which is used to The result would be used to control actuator which would
collect from the hoist and the relative speed of the supply ship adjust the motor speed and do loop until the cargo were put
signal transmitted to the PC, the PC sends the control on the deck successfully.
command and the conversion into the corresponding the
signal sent to the drive section.

4. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS

In order to test the effectiveness of the heave compensation

testing system mentioned in this paper, the usual PID control
algorithms had been tested in this experiment system. The
experimental results, theoretical analysis and simulation
results had also been compared in this paper.

4.1 PID control algorithms

In an automation control system, PID, which is also known

as Proportional Integral Differential, is a kind of normal
control law in controllers. PID control is to constitute a
control volume to control the controlled object through the
linear combination of proportion, integral calculus and
differential calculus of deviation.
The relation between output u(t) and input e(t) in the PID
controller can be expressed as below.

 1 de  t   Figure 7. Workflow of control program

u  t   K p e  t    e  t  dt  Td  (6)
 Ti dt 

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4.3 Record and analysis compensation system had been developed in this paper. The
construction of this system is based on the actual heave
The compensation velocity was set to be three centimeters compensation structure on offshore cranes which combined
per second. Different frequencies were set to simulate the with detecting system, driving system, control system and
motion of deck in the heave direction, low frequency was mechanical executing system. It can response performance of
about to 0.1 hertz while high frequency was about to 1 hertz. the real heave compensation system accurately, and
The object in this experiment was the relative velocity controllers can be divided into embedded real-time control
between the descending cargo and the deck. system and real-time control system based on PC, which is
The velocity curves which reflected the relative speed convenient for product developing and experimental
between the cargos and being supplied deck were drawn detecting for each control strategy based on Simulink
under different frequency disturbance according to a series of platform. Finally, the conventional PID control strategy had
experimental data with cubic spline curve interpolation, been tested in this system. The experimental results were
which were shown in Figure 8. basically in line with the theoretical analysis in references
which could confirm the validity of the heave compensation
system experimental prototype designed in this paper. In the
following research, a visual system may be installed as
sensors to do further research on visual control.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

College Students in Shanghai Innovation Training Projects

(CXS201405024).

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