Modeling and Simulation for Motion Synchronization Control of Jacket Leveling Tool

Leveling operation is a very important step in the installation process of offshore jacket platform and it is performed by leveling tool. In this paper, the hydraulic lifting subsystem model of leveling tool is established, and a modified Smith predictor is used to address the time delay problem caused by long pipeline. A composite control strategy combining identical and master slave control mode is adopted to solve synchronization control problem of the multi-cylinder hydraulic lifting system. A fuzzy self-tuning PI controller between the master and slave cylinder is designed to compensate the synchronization error. The simulation results show that the modified Smith predictor has better control effect than conventional Smith predictor for the hydraulic system with long pipelines. The synchronous approach has high precision and can meet the leveling requirements.