A Nonlinear Control Strategy for Boom Cranes in Radial Direction

To increase the effectiveness of the cargo transshipment process is one of the most important objectives for the automation of cranes. Therefore new control strategies are applied. This paper presents a nonlinear controller in order to solve the trajectory tracking and disturbance rejection problem for a boom crane. A model of the crane dynamics in radial direction is derived considering the dominant nonlinearities such as the actuator kinematics. Further on, the coupling of a slewing and luffing motion is taken into account. This coupling is caused by the centrifugal acceleration of the load in radial direction during a slewing motion. Based on the nonlinear model a linearizing and disturbance decoupling control law is derived and discussed. Measurement results from the boom crane validate the good performance of the nonlinear controller.