Article

Journal of Vibration and Control

0(0) 1–20

Exponential stabilization of flexural sway ! The Author(s) 2019

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vibration of gantry crane via boundary DOI: 10.1177/1077546319876147
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control method

Farshid Entessari1 , Ali Najafi Ardekany2 and Aria Alasty3

Abstract
This paper aims to develop a boundary control solution for complicated gantry crane coupled motions. In addition to the
large angle sway motion, the crane cable has a flexural transverse vibration. The Hamilton principle has been utilized to
derive the governing partial differential equations of motion. The control objectives which are sought include: moving the
payload to the desired position; reducing the payload swing with large sway angle; and finally suppressing the cable
transverse vibrations in the presence of boundary disturbances simultaneously. These simultaneous boundary control
objectives make the problem challenging. The proposed control approach is based on the original nonlinear hybrid partial
differential equation–ordinary differential equation model without any simplifications of sway motion nonlinearities,
coupling effects, and the effect of gravitational force. Using the Lyapunov method, a boundary control law has been
designed which guarantees the exponential stability and uniform boundedness of the closed-loop system. In order to
demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control method, numerical simulation results are provided by applying the
finite difference method.

Keywords
Flexible crane system, distributed parameter system, vibration dissipation, sway control, boundary control

and the large amplitude vibrations due to the pendulum

I. Introduction
Cranes are one of the crucial items of equipment in
modern engineering, which are used to perform major
tasks, including carrying heavy loads in various indus-
trial applications. The potential of cranes in handling
gigantic loads is clear so that they are used in railway
depots, offshore platforms, and also factories (Abdel-
Rahman et al., 2003). There are many different types of
cranes, which can be chosen in line with specific tasks to
be implemented. The gantry crane possesses horizontal
and vertical two-dimensional movements (Ramli et al.,
2017). A crane involves both a hoisting and support
mechanism which is also known as the trolley. There
is a flexible cable connected to the payload and this is
suspended from a point on the support mechanism as
shown in Figure 1.
The main issues in crane operations that must be
considered are timing the transportation, guaranteeing
the precise locating the payload in the desired location,
and ensuring the operating safety. For high-speed pre-
cision transportation systems, the swing of the payload
such as motion, flexible properties of the cable, and the
external disturbances contribute to imprecise position-
ing which is time consuming, extortionate and perilous
as well. Therefore, effective control methods for sway
control and vibration suppression have attracted a
great deal of attention currently (Fang et al., 2003;
Ismail et al., 2009; Vaughan et al., 2010). According
to Tuan et al. (2016), in order to suppress the sway
1
School of Science and Engineering, Sharif University of Technology,
International Campus, Kish, Islamic Republic of Iran
2
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, K. N. Toosi University of Technology,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
3
School of Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology,
Tehran, Islamic Republic of Iran
Received: 28 May 2019; accepted: 22 August 2019
Corresponding author:
Aria Alasty, School of Mechanical Engineering, Sharif University of
Technology, Azadi Avenue, PO Box 11365-11155, Tehran, Islamic
Republic of Iran.
Email: aalasti@sharif.edu