Feedback and feedforward control law for a ship crane with Maryland rigging system

A state-space model of the shipboard crane based on implicit description of the crane with no simplifying assumptions is developed. By choosing appropriate states, full control authorities for changing the length of the rope is achieved. Three control actions are considered: changing the luffing angle and changing the length of the rope from two points on the boom. A chaotic rolling moment, with a dominant frequency of the same order as the resonance frequency of the shipboard crane, is applied to the ship as an external disturbance. The effect of this disturbance is studied. Feedforward and feedback controllers are then designed and tested for this shipboard crane to suppress the load pendulation caused by ship rolling. The friction in the pulley is assumed negligible. The simulation results based on these controllers show more than %98 decrease in the pendulation magnitude due to control.