2018 International Conference on Industrial Engineering, Applications and Manufacturing (ICIEAM)

Crane Anti-Sway Control System with Sway Angle

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Enin S.S., Omelchenko E.Y., Beliy A.V.
Automated Electrical Drive and Mechatronics Dept.
Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (NMSTU)
Magnitogorsk, Russia
s.enin@magtu.ru

Abstract—The paper provides the analysis of an anti-sway
control system using a gyroscope measurement as a sway angle
feedback. The system consists of two devices. The first device is
the transmitter containing a gyroscope, a microcontroller and a
wireless device to send a measured data. The second device is a
receiver containing a wireless device to read measured data, a
microcontroller and a communication module to organize an
industrial network with an electrical drive system. The main idea
of a payload sway reduction is to provide the change of traveling
mechanism speed reference in a special way. The objective of the
study is to indicate a feasibility and performance of the designed
anti-sway control system. The analysis of the system was
performed using a computer modeling method by Matlab
software (The MathWorks, Inc). A computer model of an
overhead crane was used to study the operation of the anti-sway
control system. The transients of the sway angle and the velocity
of the traveling mechanism were obtained. The anti-sway control
system makes it possible to adjust an extent of a sway
compensation that the transients demonstrate. The proposed
system has a rather simple structure and does not require high
skills of the personnel to setup and adjust the system. It does not
require a powerful hardware equipment and high processing
power to create a mathematical model. The designed system can
be integrated in almost each electrical variable drive system
using industrial network interfaces or another means to provide
an additional speed reference for the drive. The designed anti-
sway control system provides for the production operation time
decrease because of the precise positioning of a payload.
Keywords—crane; anti-sway; gyroscope; speed profile;
computer model; control system
I. INTRODUCTION
A sway angle definition is a very important task to provide
a precise positioning of suspended cargo. There are two
common ways to define an angle of cargo swaying: by sensors
and sensorless methods. Almost each anti-sway control system
consists of a mathematical model of mechanical and electrical
crane parts.
In [1] an inclinometer is investigated as a sway sensor
together with an observer as a part of a mathematical model.
The measurement of the inclination angle of the spreader and
the conversion of the measured value into a sway angle is a
base of the method using in [2].
An image sensor as a spreader speed sensor was proposed
in [3] with the subsequent using the measured value in real
time controller. An anti-sway control system SIMOCRANE by
Siemens corp. [4] is an example of image sensor feedback. The
system consists of high-performance optical camera and a
deflector. Data received from the camera transfers to a crane
mathematical model to generate a special speed profile of a
traveling mechanism. The fuzzy controller for an anti-sway
system is described in detail in [5, 6]. A neural network is
another way to provide sway-free movement of a payload. A
description of this method is represented in [7, 8].
Open-loop methods providing a sway-free operation of a
crane do not require a sway angle feedback. However, every
open-loop system needs to have another variables feedback of
a crane. For example, ABB Company developed an open-loop
anti-sway control system [9] that is based on the calculation of
free-oscillation frequency and further using it in mathematical
model. Free-oscillation frequency is proportional to the cable
length of a suspended cargo [10]. It means that the length of a
cable should be measured or calculated using another sensor.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
The main idea of the work is to describe an anti-sway
control system measuring a sway angle of suspended cargo.
Implementation of a gyroscope as a sway sensor gives a
number of benefits [11, 12]. First of all a sway angle feedback
provide an opportunity to diminish an influence of cargo
swaying to crane operation causing by acceleration and
deceleration of a traveling mechanism or by non-zero
conditions as wind.
The designed sway control system consists of two devices:
transmitter and receiver. The transmitter can be settled on a
crane hook, rope or polyspast. The main part of the transmitter
is a gyroscope device measuring a sway angle in 3 axis (Fig.1).
A microcontroller is necessary to receive a data from a
gyroscope by one of the pointed interface and to send it to wife
module transferring the data.
The receiver has a microcontroller to provide an incoming
data reading and organize an industrial network (Ethernet as
example). The microcontroller forms the certain speed profile
(taking into account a sway process) and sends it as a speed
reference through network. The transmitter can be part of a
control box or an individual device mounting on a wall, a rack
or a plate.

978-1-5386-4307-5/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 2018 International Conference on Industrial Engineering, Applications and Manufacturing (ICIEAM)
The principle of a sway reduction is a proper traveling
mechanism speed control (Fig. 2) i.e. the speed of a mechanism
traveling a suspended cargo has to be changed in a special way.
Fig. 1. Block diagram of the sway angle sensor device
The main reasons generating a swaying of cargo are an
acceleration and a deceleration of a traveling mechanism. Thus,
speed (acceleration) control of the mechanism is the way to
decrease a payload swaying. As represented in Fig. 2 a
decrease of traveling mechanism acceleration (deceleration)
will cause an inconsiderable sway process as well as increase a
technological process time.
Fig. 2. Principle of a sway reduction by a traveling mechanism speed control
The designed principle of traveling mechanism speed
control is the change of the speed proportionally to a sway
angle in real-time. Block diagram of anti-sway control system
based on the designed principle is shown in Fig. 3. This system
is suitable for every variable speed electrical drive system.
Anti-sway control system represented in Fig. 3 contains a
gyroscope that is set in a hook or cable (it could be set
anywhere in a suspended cargo). The gyroscope may have a
digital interface to transmit measuring data to controller. In
other case, a controller with a digital-to-analog converter
(DAC) should be used. Microcontroller receiving and scaling
input data from gyroscope represents Sway Compensation
block. The block reads the value of reference speed Vref from
joystick and adjusts it with an additional value of speed Vsway
proportional to a sway extent.
Fig. 3. Block diagram of the designed anti-sway control system
The equations of an overhead crane mechanical system
were derived [13]. The equation were slightly changed to take
into account an electrical drive system features and to provide
the form that is much more convenient for a computer
modeling purposes. The equations (1) represent the
mathematical model of an overhead crane.
The equations consist of the folowing abbreviations:
TABLE I. MATHEMATICAL MODEL ABBREVIATIONS
Parameter Description
α sway angle of a cargo on axis of a trolley
β sway angle of a cargo on axis of a crane (bridge)
z1 payload vertical coordinate (height)
xt trolley coordinate
yb crane (bridge) coordiante
F1 – F3 forces of mechanisms electrical drive system
f1, f0x, f0y friction forces of the mechanisms
m1, mt, mb mass of payload, trolley and crane respectively
bx, by damping coefficients
(1)
 2018 International Conference on Industrial Engineering, Applications and Manufacturing (ICIEAM)
The mathematical model of an overhead crane is the basis same time (Fig. 5). The task to adjust the speed of a traveling
of the crane computer model. Using the Matlab software (The mechanism to avoid a cargo swaying is realized with the
MathWorks, Inc) the computer model of overhead crane was transfer function block having the coefficient K. The output of
build [14]. Fig. 4 represents the crane (bridge) mechanism the block is applied to speed reference as an additional value
computer model that is a part of the whole computer model. It with a negative sign.
is build using the Simulink library with the stiff/Trapezoidal
Solver and the variable step time.

Fig. 5. Computer model of anti-sway control system

Fig. 4. Computer model of a crane (bridge) mechanism of an overhead crane
The computer model of the designed anti-sway control
system is performed using the computer model of variable
speed drive [15, 16].
III. RESULTS
To indicate the feasibility of the designed system
simulation of computer model was accomplished. Modeling
object is a typical overhead crane rating at 10 tons. The crane
(bridge) mechanism was chosen to obtain transients of
mechanical parameters of the crane system.
For a simulation purposes the folowing parameters were
used:
TABLE II. SIMULATION PARAMETERS
The transients of the crane speed and the sway angle are
shown in Fig.7 for a few values of the sway compensation
coefficient K. The sway angle transients show the possibility of
a cargo swaying reduction using the designed system. Fig. 7
illustrates three operation regimes: K = 0, K = K1, K = K2
moreover K2 > K1. Adjusting of the sway compensation
coefficient provides generating of the different oscillating or
monotonous sway processes (Fig. 7, a). The sway reduction
process is obtained using the special speed control of a
traveling mechanism (Fig. 7, b). The speed control profile is
produced automatically with the help of sway angle feedback.
There is no need to adjust the speed reference by a crane
operator.
Another important task that can be solved using the
designed anti-sway control system is the positioning of the
cargo. Sometimes it is necessary to provide a precise path of
the cargo movement. A method to realize it is to define a path
or a trajectory of traveling mechanism of a crane and provide a
position of a payload right under the mechanism (Fig. 6)

Parameter Value Unit Description

m1 10 tons payload mass

mt 3.6 tons trolley mass

mb 5 tons crane (bridge) mass

L1 5 m rope lenght

Vb 1.3 m/s crane movement velocity

Pmb 5.5 kW crane motor nominal power

Nmb 1420 rpm crane motor nominal speed

The main task of the simulation is to indicate the
performance and feasibility of the designed system. This
system is a rather simple because it does not require
implementing an additional mathematical model of electrical or
mechanical systems of a crane.
The approach using to create anti-sway control system is
described by the block diagram that is computer model at the
Fig. 6. Trajectory of the crane mechanism and the payload
IV. DISCUSSION
The designed anti-sway control system consists of two
hardware devices with the imbedded software. An adjustment
of the system is a rather simple process and does not require a
 2018 International Conference on Industrial Engineering, Applications and Manufacturing (ICIEAM)

b
Fig. 7. Transients of crane (bridge) and payload movement simulation: a – sway angle (deg); b – crane velocity (m/s)

special means or a special skill of personnel to install it and
setup.
The anti-sway control system has a great importance for a
productivity and performance increase of a crane using the
system.
The sway angle feedback based on a gyroscope device is a
cheaper means to realize a closed-loop control system. An
open-loop control system does not requires implementing of a
special software and a high computational power.
Up-to-date hardware and software make it possible to
create sway angle feedback device with low power
consumption, sleep mode and other ways to provide a longer
autonomous lifetime of the device. Thus, it can operate using a
power sells with no external power supply.
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