Vibration Reduction of Gantry Crane Loads with Hoisting

Using Finite Impulse Response (FIR) Digital Filters

D. ECONOMOU I. ANTONIADIS
Research Assistant Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
National Technical University of Athens,
Polytechnic Campus, Zografou, P. O. Box 64078, 15710
GREECE.

Abstract: - In this paper a method is proposed for the reduction of vibration of loads carried by planar gantry
crane, with hoisting of the load. The proposed method is based on the preconditioning of the inputs to the
system by digital filtering the input function. Conventional FIR or IIR filters can be used for the preconditioning
approach. Simulation results were used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this method.

Key-Words: - Vibration Suppression, Input Preconditioning, Digital Filters.

1 Introduction proposed, using time-varying gains [13]. Fuzzy

Cranes are widely used in industry and transportation control methods have been proposed [14,15] and have

of heavy loads. The undesirable load swing results in been compared with classical controllers [14]. There

drop of efficiency, load damages and even accidents. are certain difficulties for the practical

Thus, methods to reduce the transient and residual implementation of all the above methods. These

load swing are of major importance. difficulties include the accurate measurement of the

The problem of modeling the system and control the load position and velocity (since a new load is carried

load swing is not a trivial problem, especially when in each operation), the accurate measurement of the

hoisting of the load during the motion is considered. swing angle and also the increased complexity of the

In this case the system is nonlinear and time-varying. controller.

These properties of the system make it more difficult Of special interest in the present work, are methods to

to design an appropriate control method, capable to control the load swing that are based on the input

suppress the oscillation of the load. shaping approach [4-6]. They use open-loop control

Various attempts have been made to control the load and, thus, simplify the requirements, the cost and the

swing. Open-loop or feedforward control methods complexity of the practical implementation. They are

have been proposed, either in the form of optimal based on the convolution of every arbitrary input to

control [1-3] or using input shaping methods [4-6]. the system with a series of impulses known as “input

All these methods suffer from the fact that the system shapers”[16,17]. The resulted input is able to move

possesses nonlinear and time-varying characteristics the system to the same final position, as the arbitrary

and either need complex and impractical development input, cancelling the effect of the residual vibration.

or have limited robustness to variations of the system While input shaping methods present a good

characteristics. performance in a variety of systems and applications,

A combination of an open-loop control during the their robustness is limited in local areas around the

motion and a close-loop control, starting at the end of system natural frequencies used for the design of the

the open-loop, has been proposed [7-9], in several impulses. Only the increase of the total duration of the

forms, assuming that sensor measurements can be impulse sequence can increase the robustness, but this

performed. Also, a vast variety of close-loop control results in undesired delays in the total duration of the

methods have been proposed. An optimal feedback system motion. Especially when a time-varying

controller has been designed and numerically tested system is considered, the robustness to changes of the

[10]. An adaptive control method uses neural network system parameters is of major importance.

to perform the self-tuning [11]. Another adaptive In a first attempt to extend the robustness of the

controller uses a parameter-learning procedure based vibration suppression method based on the

on the measurement of the attitude of the crane lifter convolution of the guidance function with a series of

[12]. An observer-controller method has been impulses, a general approach for the impulse
sequence convolution procedure has been proposed, cable l and the angle of the cable φ. Assuming that the
leading to a set of three different methods for the cable is an inflexible and massless rod, the equation of
proper design of the impulse sequence [18]. The motion can be written as:
impulse sequence approach is significantly extended,


lφ + 2lφ


+ ( g +


l ) sin(φ) −


x cos(φ) = 0 (1)
by establishing a theoretical framework, according to
The acceleration of the trolley, x (t ) ,


and the
which the design of an appropriate guidance function
can be transformed to the proper design of a acceleration of the cable,


l ( t ) , are the inputs to the

conventional low-pass digital filter [19,20]. system. The goal of the proposed method is to move
The effectiveness of conventional Finite Impulse the load to a new position (defined by the final values
Response (FIR) filters for residual vibration of x and l), while the swing angle φ is minimized.
suppression has been further studied thoroughly, both x(t)
theoretically and experimentally [21]. Based on five
requirements, that ensure vibration suppression with
trolley
minimum residual vibration error, short delays,
increased robustness, and rigid body motion, a
systematic design procedure has been introduced. It
is based on the concept of Delay-Error-Order (DEO)
cable
curves, which have been introduced as a design tool
for determining the optimal FIR Filter Design l(t)
Parameters [21].
load
φ(t)
Parallel, the vibration suppression capabilities of
conventional Infinite Impulse Response (IIR) filters g
have been examined and experimentally verified
[22]. As in the case of FIR digital filters, the DEO Fig. 1. Model of the planar gantry crane
curves have been used to properly design the IIR
The original (non-filtered) inputs used for the
filters.
numerical simulations are based on the maximum
Ten FIR and five IIR digital filters have been totally
acceleration and maximum velocity of the system. If
considered [21,22]. Although all types of filters have

x
m and x

m are the maximum acceleration and velocity
excellent vibration suppression properties, three of
the FIR filters introduce very small time delays and in the horizontal direction and dx is the desired
present maximal robustness in changes of the movement, then the quickest motion of the trolley can
system's dynamic parameters [21]. Parallel, as a be derived with a bang-bang or bang-off-bang
general rule, IIR filters introduce larger delays than acceleration input. The bang-bang input corresponds
those of the FIR filters. However, their overall to the case where:
2
performance in certain cases, as verified also x

experimentally, can be better than that obtained by dx ≤ m (2)
xm



FIR filters [22].
In this work the input preconditioning approach using and the time instant where the switching between

digital filters is used to deal with the problem of the acceleration and deceleration impulses occurs is:

load swing of gantry cranes. First a model for the dx

crane is proposed and the necessary inputs to the tsx = (3)
xm



system are defined. Then, the input preconditioning
approach using digital filters is presented. Last, In any other case the input is bang-off-bang, the

numerical simulation results are used to show the duration of the acceleration and the deceleration phase

x

tax = m
effectiveness of the method when the moving distance
is: (4)
and the hoisting of the load are varied over a large


xm
range.
and the total duration of the motion is:

dx x
m
t = + (5)
x
m


xm
tx

2 System description
A model of a planar gantry crane with a variable-


Equivalently, if lm is the maximum hoisting
length cable is used in this work. The model is shown
acceleration, l
m is the maximum hoisting velocity and
in Fig. 1. The characteristics of the system are: the
horizontal position of the trolley x, the length of the dl is the desired hoisting, the quickest hoisting of the
load is, also, of bang-bang or bang-off-bang type. It is x(t ) and


Both the control inputs

l (t ) in this work are
performed with a bang-bang input when:
considered to be of bang-bang or bang-off-bang form.

2
dl ≤ m
l
(6) The maximum accelerations
x
m and

lm are applied



lm
m and l
m for each motion
until the maximum velocity x
and the time instant where the switching between
is reached, then a constant velocity motion is
acceleration and deceleration impulses occur is:
performed and finally the maximum deceleration is
dl
tsl =


(7) applied until the motion stops. The time instants for
each motion that correspond to the start or the stop of
l m
each acceleration or deceleration phase result from Eq.
else the input is bang-off-bang, the duration of the
acceleration and the deceleration phase is: x
m , x
m ,


(3), (4), (5) or Eq. (7), (8) and (9). Since
lm

l

are constants depending on the system, the

tal =

m m
and l
(8)
lm bang-bang or bang-off-bang input functions for every

and the total duration of the motion is: move distance dx and hoist distance dl can be easily

dl l

derived.

t =
+

m (9) Fig. 3 and 4 show the load swing angle φ for two
lm lm
tl

different move distances dx, while dl=0. It can be

An example of a bang-off-bang input

x (t ) with a
corresponding velocity x
(t ) and a corresponding
displacement x(t ) is shown in Fig. 2.
observed that, in general, the residual load oscillation
differs from the transient one, due to the effect of the
deceleration phase. In some cases, as in Fig. 3, the
residual oscillation is almost canceled.

0.12
φ
(rad)
0.08

0.04

0.00

-0.04

-0.08

-0.12
0 10 20 30 t (sec) 40

Fig. 3. Transient and residual load oscillation (
x
m =0.2

m/sec2, x
m =0.4 m/sec, dx=6.22 m, l=15 m and dl=0)
0.12
φ
(rad)
0.08

0.04

0.00

-0.04

-0.08

-0.12
0 10 20 30 t (sec) 40

Fig. 4. Transient and residual load oscillation (
x
m =0.2

m/sec2, x
m =0.4 m/sec, dx=7.74 m, l=15 m and dl=0)
Fig. 2. Acceleration, velocity and displacement of a Fig. 5 and 6 show the load swing angle corresponding
typical bang-off-bang input. to the same move distances, while hoisting occurs
simultaneously with the trolley motion. It can be N
observed that the simultaneous execution of the u (kTS ) = ∑ cn g (kTS − nTSF ) (10)
horizontal motion and the hoist motion tends to excite n=0
larger load oscillation. For this reason, experienced where k is an integer, TS is the sampling period of the
crane operators usually perform these two tasks discrete signals u(tk) and g(tk), TSF is the sampling
separately, even with a cost in time delays. period of the filter and {cn} is a series of constants of
length N+1, which N is called “filter order”. The z-
transform of the filtered function U(z) is related to
0.12 the z-transform of the original input function G(z) by
φ
(rad) N
0.08 U (z ) = F (z ) G (z ) =∑ cn z -n G (z ) (11)
n=0
0.04
where:
0.00 N
F (z ) = ∑ cn z -n (12.a)
-0.04 n=0
with a corresponding frequency response function of
-0.08 the form:
N
-0.12
0 10 20 30 t (sec) 40
F ( jω ) = F ( j 2 π f ) = ∑ c n e - n 2π
j fT SF
(12.b)
n=0
The input preconditioning approach, using FIR
Fig. 5. Transient and residual load oscillation (
x
m =0.2
digital filters, is well established both theoretically
2 2
m/sec , x
m =0.4 m/sec, dx=6.22 m,


lm =0.4 m/sec , and experimentally for Linear Time Invariant (LTI)

=0.8 m/sec, l=15 m and dl= -10 m) Systems [20,21]. According to the proposed
lm preconditioning approach, instead of the direct
implementation of the original input functions

x (t )
0.12 and


l ( t ) in Eq. (1), conditioned guidance functions
φ
(rad)
0.08 xc (t ) and




lc ( t ) can be alternatively used, obtained

0.04
x (t ) and


by the original guidance functions

l ( t ) by

digital filtering, as shown in Equation (13.a,b):

0.00 N
xc (TS )


= ∑ cn

x(kTS − nTSF ) (13.a)
-0.04 n =0
N
-0.08


lc (TS ) = ∑ cn

l ( sTS − nTSF ) (13.b)
n=0
-0.12
0 10 20 30 t (sec) 40 Provided that the frequency response function F(jω)
of the filter is zero at frequencies coinciding with the
Fig. 6. Transient and residual load oscillation (
x
m =0.2 expected natural frequencies of the dynamic system
2 2
according to Equation (12.b), this filter is capable of
m/sec , x
m =0.4 m/sec, dx=7.74 m,


lm =0.4 m/sec ,
completely eliminating the residual vibration effect.

=0.8 m/sec, l=15 m and dl= -10 m) In addition, the response for zero frequency of this
lm
filter should be kept equal to one, in order to ensure
the proper motion of the mechanical system as a rigid
body. In view of Equation (12.b), this last
3. Input preconditioning requirement becomes:
3.1. Input preconditioning using FIR filters N
A Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter is a series of F (0 ) = ∑
n=0
cn =1 (14)
constants {cn}, which are the filter coefficients [23].
The mathematical foundation of filtering is a Considering robust residual vibration suppression,
convolution procedure, resulting to a discrete filtered the robustness properties for the preconditioning
signal u(kTS), which is obtained from an original procedure can be directly met, by extending the
discrete input signal g(kTS) according to Equation requirement for zero frequency response of the filter
(10), not only for individual frequencies coinciding with
the expected natural frequencies of the system, but
also for extended areas (stop-band areas) of the filter
frequency response function F(jω), in order to cover
now additionally the possible variations of the
system natural frequencies. Provided that the stop-
band area of the filter becomes the maximum
possible, the maximum possible degree of robustness
of the guidance function can be attained.
Although this method has been proposed and
experimentally verified to be effective for LTI
systems [19-21], it can be used, also, for nonlinear
time varying systems, under the following
requirements:
R.1) The amplitude of the load oscillations is kept
small during the motion of the system, to lead to
a linearized behavior of the system.
R.2) The filter stop-band is wide enough to cover the
whole frequency range of the time-varying
natural frequency of the system.
3.2. Filter selection
An appropriate FIR filter, capable to suppress the
transient and residual vibration of the crane load, must
have a pass-band (response equal to 1) for the lowest
frequencies and a stop-band (response equal to 0) for
frequencies equal and higher of the lowest natural
frequency of the system. This type of filter is called
low-pass filter.
There are several methods available to design low-
pass FIR filters, such as the Parks-McClellan method,
the Window-based method and the Constrained Least
Squares method. Each of them calculates the
coefficients cn, using a different procedure, in order to
approximate the desired frequency response. Due to
this approximation, the actual frequency response of a
filter differs from the desired: there are ripples in the
pass-band and stop-band (the response is not exactly 1
or 0 respectively) and also a transition band (response
between 1 and 0) exists between the pass-band and
the stop-band. The existence of ripples in the stop
band prevents the total cancellation of the swing,
however they can be reduced dramatically.
An extra insensitive filter capable to suppress the
transient and residual vibrations of the crane load,
must cover the following requirements:
R.a) Cut-off frequency (lower limit of the stop-band)
smaller than the system's smallest natural
frequency.
R.b) Stop-band quite wide in frequency in order to
suppress the vibrations while the system
frequencies are varying.
R.c) Response for zero frequency equal to one, in
order to achieve appropriate rigid body motion
R.d) Ripples on the stop-band smaller than a pre-
specified acceptable vibration error.
R.e) Minimum possible filter delay
Based on the above requirements, a method for the
optimum filter design have been proposed [21].
According to that method, the Delay-Error-Order
(DEO) curves are generated via an iterative algorithm
using the Matlab Signal Processing Toolbox [24].
This algorithm is used to vary the filter design
parameters over a large range of possible values for
each pair of filter order and permissible vibration
error and then to calculate the minimum relative delay
introduced by the filter. Then the minimum relative
delay is plotted as a function of the filter order and the
permissible vibration error. Because only two of the
IIR Filter Design Parameters can be determined from
the DEO curves, look-up tables were also created
during the optimization process to store the values for
all the design parameters that lead to a minimum
delay [21].
In these experiments the acceptable vibration error
was set at 5% of the vibration induced by the original
inputs. For this value of the acceptable vibration error,
from the corresponding DEO curves for FIR filters
[21], the minimum filter delay was found to be 1.25
times the largest eigenperiod of the system. Several
types of conventional FIR filters are able to cover the
above requirements: filters designed with the
Constrained Least Squares method, filters designed
using the Parks-McClellan method or filters designed
using a Chebysev window [23].
In the numerical simulation presented in this paper,
the latter filter has been used. However, all the above
filters have similar results. For these numerical
experiments, a low-pass filter of order 26 was
designed using the software package Matlab version
5.1 and its signal processing toolbox. The size of the
stop-band ripples was less than 5% of the amplitude
of the pass-band. The desired total duration of the
filter was 9.72 sec, which is 1.25 times of the system's
largest eigenperiod.
4. Numerical simulations
4.1. Motion without hoisting.
Numerical simulations were conducted to show the
effectiveness of the proposed method. A crane was
considered, having the following characteristics:
• maximum trolley acceleration
x
m =0.2 m/sec2
• maximum trolley velocity x
m =0.4 m/sec
2
• maximum hoist acceleration


lm =0.4 m/sec
• maximum hoist velocity l
m =0.8 m/sec
• initial cable length l=15 m
The model described in Eq. 1 was used to obtain the the original and the filtered input in relation to the
numerical results. The Runge-Kutta method was used hoist distance. Fig. 10 presents the peak-to-peak
for the integration of the differential equation. residual vibration induced by the original and the
0.12 filtered input in relation to the hoist distance.
Original 0.16
)d Filtered
ra( Original
nio )d Filtered
ta 0.08
rbi ra( 0.12
nio
Vt ta
nie rbi
nsa tVn
Tr ies 0.08
na
mu 0.04 rT
mix
aM mu
mix 0.04
aM
0.00
2 4 6 8 10
Move Distance (m) 0.00
2 4 6 8 10
Fig. 7. Maximum transient vibration in relation to the
Hoist Distance (m)
move distance. Fig. 9. Maximum transient vibration in relation to the
0.16 hoist distance.
Original 0.20
)d Filtered
ra( 0.12 Original
nio )d 0.16 Filtered
ta ra(
rbi noti
Vl
au 0.08 abr
dsi iV 0.12
eR la
uid
umm se 0.08
ix 0.04 R
aM m
uim
xa 0.04
M
0.00
2 4 6 8 10
Move Distance (m) 0.00
2 4 6 8 10
Fig. 8. Maximum residual vibration in relation to the
Hoist Distance (m)
move distance. Fig. 10. Maximum residual vibration in relation to the
hoist distance.
First, the swing angle was examined during a variable-
distance motion without hoisting. The move distance The transient and residual oscillation induced by the
was varied from 1 to 10 m. The appropriate bang-bang filtered input appears to be very small even when the
or bang-off-bang input was defined and the hoisting was 66% of the initial cable length.
preconditioned one was calculated. The maximum
peak-to-peak vibration was calculated during the
motion (transient vibration) and after the end of the 5. Conclusions
motion (residual vibration) for each one of the two Transient and residual swing of gantry crane load can
inputs. Fig. 7 and 8 show the maximum peak-to-peak be controlled efficiently when conventional digital
transient and residual vibration in relation to the move filters are used to precondition the inputs to the
distance. system. As was shown by the numerical simulation
It can be easily observed that the transient and residual results, the preconditioned inputs reduced significantly
vibration induced by the filtered input was very small, both the transient and residual oscillation of the load,
regardless of the move distance. Thus, the requirement even when the hoist distance of the load was large.
R.1 as was set in section 3.1 is met adequately. This method is easily applicable in practical
applications, is simple to implement, efficient and
does not require special sensors or other equipment.
The only cost paid for the control of load swing is a
4.2. Hoisting during the motion. time delay of the motion, which is equal to 1.25 times
Hoisting was considered to occur during the trolley the largest natural period of the system.
motion. The motion distance was kept at 7.5 m while Although, in this work, this method is presented as an
the load lifting was varied from 1 to 10 m. Fig. 9 open-loop control approach, it can be combined with
shows the peak-to-peak transient vibration induced by simple close-loop positioning controllers. In this case,
the input preconditioning approach can be used to
provide reference inputs to the controller, which does
not excite vibrations. Thus, the shortcomings of open-
loop control can be avoided, without the need of
complex and expensive close-loop control systems.
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