32 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO.

1, JANUARY 2003

Control of a Jib-Type Crane Mounted on a

Flexible Structure
Kiyoshi Takagi and Hidekazu Nishimura, Member, IEEE

Abstract—This paper deals with modeling and control of a crane
mounted on a tower-like flexible structure. A fast transfer of the
load causes swaying of the load rope and vibration of the flexible
structure. Our object is to control both the sway and the vibration
by the inherent capability of the tower crane. We have already suc-
ceeded in realizing a decentralized control consisting of two indi-
vidual controllers. This paper describes the design of a centralized
control system considering coupling of between the up-and-down
(boom luff) direction and the rotational direction. This is because
there is a possibility that the control worsened due to the decentral-
ized control system because it did not take into account coupling
both directions. It is, therefore, necessary to compare it with a cen-
tralized control system and to examine the advantage of a decen-
tralized control system precisely. From the results of the compar-
ison of experiments and analysis, it is shown that the decentral-
ized control system has almost the same performance and stability
as the centralized one and that it is effective for the control of a
tower crane.
Index Terms—Decentralized control, flexible structure, jib-type
crane, analysis, position control, robust control, vibration con-
trol.
I. INTRODUCTION
In our previous study [6], we applied a decentralized control
system consisting of two individual controllers for the up-and-
down direction and the rotational direction. The reasons why a
decentralized control system was applied are the following.
• We assumed there is little coupling between the up-and-
down direction and the rotational direction of the tower
crane.
• It is easy to identify models for controller design and to
adjust the controller.
• In an experiment, the quantity of computation is small.
Using a decentralized compensator designed for each
reduced-order model, simulations and experiments were carried
out. It was verified that the simultaneous control of the boom
angle, the rotational angle, the vibration of the tower and the
sway of the load was possible by the inherent capability of the
tower crane.
However, there was a possibility that the control was made
worse by the decentralized control system especially in the vibra-
tion control of the tower and the load because coupling between
each direction occurs. It is consequently necessary to examine
the advantage of the decentralized control system precisely.

A CRANE used in construction and transportation has a

problem in that its movement causes swaying of the load.
Although a skilled operator simultaneously controls the sway
We designed the centralized control system considering the
coupling of both directions and compared it with the decentral-
ized control system. First, the centralized control design model
and the position of the crane, the need for automatic operation
was derived and the centralized controller was designed.
with sway prevention has increased. Therefore, many studies
Based on the response in the control experiment, a comparison
have been proposed on the efficiency of sway control of the
to the decentralized one was carried out. Next, when the param-
load for a container crane or a rotary jib crane [1]. Moreover,
eter that had the greatest effect on the coupling between both
the input-shaping method has been utilized for the jib crane to
directions varied, the robust stability of the decentralized control
consider operator commanded maneuvers [2]–[4].
system was examined. The parameters contributing to the varia-
This paper discusses the control of a crane mounted on a
tion are the displacement of the center of gravity and the rotational
tower-like flexible structure. This type of crane is called a
speed. The centralized control design model was transformed
“tower crane.” Because of this structure, the motion of the
into a linear fractional transformation (LFT) representation and
crane causes vibration of the flexible structure in addition to
a comparison of the robust stability between the centralized
swaying of the load, which in turn causes the efficiency of the
and the decentralized control was carried out using analysis.
operator to decrease. To overcome this problem, our research
From the results of the comparison of the experiments and
group has already succeeded in controlling both the sway of
analysis, it is shown that the decentralized control system has
the load and the vibration of the tower by a torque to the boom
almost the same performance and stability as the centralized one
in only the up-and-down (boom luff) direction of the boom
and is effective for the control of the tower crane.
with variations in the load-rope length [5]. In actual operation,
however, the motion of the rotational direction is not negligible.
II. MODELING
Manuscript received July 11, 2001. Manuscript received in final form April A. Full-Order Model
9, 2002. Recommended by Associate Editor D. A. Schoenwald.
K. Takagi is with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and 1) Calculation of Energy: This paper defines the de-
Technology Tsukuba 305-8568, Japan (e-mail: takagi.k@aist.go.jp). grees-of-freedom model Fig. 1 as the full-order model of the
H. Nishimura is with the Department of Electronics and Mechanical Engi- tower crane. Definitions of symbols are shown as follows.
neering, Chiba University, Chiba 263-8522, Japan (e-mail: nism@meneth.tm.
chiba-u.ac.jp). Displacement of the tower in direction (relative to
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCST.2002.806435 the top of the tower).
1063-6536/03$17.00 © 2003 IEEE
TAKAGI AND NISHIMURA: CONTROL OF A JIB-TYPE CRANE MOUNTED ON A FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE 33

Distance in the direction between the center of

mass of the tower top and the origin.
Distance in the direction between the center of
mass of the tower top and the origin.
Displacement of the top of the tower in the
up-and-down direction.
Displacement of the top of the tower in the perpen-
dicular direction of up-and-down.
Control input for the rotational direction.
Longitudinal distance from the root along the boom.
Modulus of elasticity of the tower part.
Cross-sectional area moment of inertia of the tower
part.
The origin of the – – axis is centered at the top of the tower.
The following is assumed.
(1.1) Mass of the rope is negligible.
(1.2) Torsional mode of the tower is negligible.
(1.3) Tower is divided into four elements.
(1.4) Boom is rigid and uniform density.
(1.5) Input force directly affects the edge of the boom
without considering the dynamics of the rope which
supports the boom.
(1.6) The center of mass of the tower top is in the plane of
the and axis.
Fig. 1. Full-order model.
Derivation of the equation of motion is shown as follows.
The potential energy and the kinetic energy of the boom
are
Displacement of the tower in direction (relative to
the top of the tower).
Boom angle.
Swing angle of the load in up-and-down direction. (1)
Rotational angle.
Swing angle of load in rotational direction. (2)
Length of boom.
Load-rope length. where and are the following displacements distant
Distance between root of boom and the origin. from the root of the boom
Length of tower.
Mass of the boom. (3)
Mass of the load. (4)
Mass of the body of the crane including the weight
of motors and the gantry. (5)
Equivalent weight of the tower.
Equivalent spring coefficient of the tower. and the displacement of the tip of the boom are
Equivalent damping coefficient of the tower. derived by in (3)–(5). The potential energy and the
Equivalent spring coefficient of the tower for re- kinetic energy of the load are
duced-order model.
Equivalent damping coefficient of the tower for re- (6)
duced-order model.
Control input for the up-and-down direction. where the position coordinates of the load are
Angle between the gantry and the – plane.
Radius of the roller. (7)
Distance between the root of the boom and the top
of the gantry. (8)
Gravitational acceleration. (9)
Moment of inertia of the top of the crane.
Weight of the top of the boom. The kinetic energy of the top of the tower is
Equivalent damping coefficient around the root of
the boom. (10)
34 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

where the position coordinates of the center of mass of the tower

top are
(11) (21)
(12)
The equivalent forces and caused by the sway of the
The potential energy and the kinetic energy of the load and load in the rotational direction are
the Rayleigh dissipation function of the tower divided into
the equivalent four-mass spring-damper system is as follows: (22)

(13) (23)

3) Governing Equation: From Assumption (1.5) the force

put into the top of the boom is

(24)
(14)
The torque put into the root of the boom is
(25)
(15) where the angle between the boom-support rope and the boom
where is the equivalent mass and spring coeffi- is
cient of the tower. Those are computed by a modal analysis of
the finite-element model of the tower part. (26)
2) Introduction of Equivalent Forces Relative to the Bending
of the Tower: In the actual tower crane, the tower is bent by the and the distance between the top of the gantry and the top of the
momental force around axis. However, from Assumption boom is
(1.6) the center of mass of the tower top is in the plane of the
and axis. Therefore, if the momental force arises because of (27)
the movement of the boom and the load, it does not affect the
Using Lagrange’s equation
top of the tower. Consequently, we consider equivalent forces
relative to the bending of the tower [7]. Considering the strain
energy in a cantilever beam, if the tower is subject to a couple
acting at the top, the deflection is (28)
where
(16)

If the tower is subject to a concentrated load at the top, the

deflection is

(17)

If the deflection of (16) and (17) is equal, is the equivalent

concentrated load of shown as below

(18) and using the small angle approximation for the sway of the load

Using (18), the equivalent forces and caused by the (29)

control input for the up-and-down direction are the governing nonlinear equation of the crane is as follows:
(19) (30)
The equivalent forces and caused by the moment in where is a nonlinear term as a function of which cannot
the up-and-down direction which the motion of the boom and be included in . Equation (30) cannot be translated
the load are put are to the state equation. So, using extended linearization [8] for the
up-and-down angle of the boom

(20)
(31)
TAKAGI AND NISHIMURA: CONTROL OF A JIB-TYPE CRANE MOUNTED ON A FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE 35

the nonlinear term is rewritten as follows:

(32)

Equation (30) is linearized as follows:

(33)
(a)
The state equation of the full-order model is obtained

(34)

where

(35)

The observation value is written by the following output equa-

tion:

(36)

B. Centralized Control Design Model

Next, a reduced-order model is necessary to design a central- (b)
ized control system. With respect to control of the tower, the first
mode is only considered. The assumptions for a new modeling Fig. 2. Models for decentralized control design. (a) Model for the up-and-
is same as (1.1)–(1.6) of the full-order model except for (1.3). down direction. (b) Model for the rotational direction.
The following is the new assumption instead of (1.3).
(2.1) The tower is a one-degree-of-freedom system, which
moves the relative coordinates and through the rotational TABLE I
SPECIFICATIONS OF TOWER CRANE MODEL
angle .
The governing equation is obtained using Lagrange’s equa-
tion

(37)

(38)

where

(39)

The natural frequency and the damping ratio of the tower

corresponds to the first mode of the full-order model (34) by
adjusting equivalent spring coefficient and equivalent
damping coefficient . The equivalent spring coefficient
are decided by investigating the eigenvalue of the full-
order model. The equivalent damping coefficient are
36 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

Fig. 3. Simulation and experimental results using PID control  : 45 ! 55(deg),  : 0 ! 45(deg).

resolved by the simulation response of the full-order model. Relative coordinates and are calculated using as
The state equation is represented in the linear parameter-varying follows:
system by (29) and (31) is as follows:
(42)

(43)
(40)

and the output equation is C. Decentralized Control Design Model

Two reduced-order models are necessary to design a de-
(41) centralized control system. Fig. 2(a) shows the model for the
TAKAGI AND NISHIMURA: CONTROL OF A JIB-TYPE CRANE MOUNTED ON A FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE 37

up-and-down direction and Fig. 2(b) shows the model for the
rotational direction. The following are assumptions for this
modeling instead of (1.3).
(3.1) The tower part is a one-degree-of-freedom system
which can move in a controlled direction and in addition to
(1.1)–(1.6).
(3.2) The load can sway only in a controlled direction.
The governing equation of this model is calculated by La-
grange’s equation. The state equation and the output equation
of the model for the up-and-down direction represented in the
linear parameter-varying system by (29) and (31) is as follows: Fig. 4. Generalized plant.

(44)

(45)

The state equation and the output equation of the model for the
rotational direction are

(46)

(47)

Table I shows specifications of the tower crane model.

(a)
D. Evaluation of Modeling
We perform the control simulation for the full-order model
(34) and compare its responses with the experimental re-
sponses. A proportional integral derivative (PID) controller
is used, which controls the boom up-and-down angle and
the rotational angle only. Fig. 3 shows the response giving
objective value for the boom angle and the rotational angle.
The solid line indicates the response by the experiment, the
broken line indicates that by the simulation and the dash-dotted
line indicates the references. Fig. 3 shows the full-order model
is accurate because the experimental responses are similar to
the simulation responses.

III. CONTROL SYSTEM DESIGN

(b)
It is evident in Fig. 3 that the conventional PID control which
only follows the references cannot suppress the vibration of the Fig. 5. Gain in weighting function. (a) Weighting function for robust stability
and multiple errors. (b) Weighting function for performance.
tower and the sway of the load. This section designs the control
system where suppresses the vibration of the tower and the sway
of the load in addition to control the positions of the crane itself. fixing the load-rope length at m and freezing
The goal is controlling the vibration, the sway, and the positions and to zero, (40) is written as follows:
at the same time.
The reduced-order model for centralized controller design
does not contain the higher modes of the tower truncated from (48)
the full-order model. The experimental setup is affected by the
uncertainties such as vibrations caused by the rotational move- The boom angle is fixed at . The generalized plant is
ments of the load, the rope supporting the boom, and so on. For shown in Fig. 4. The criterion function used for the controller
a fixed load-rope length we design a robust control system using design is the norm of the closed-loop transfer function from
the controller. to
Matrices and of the reduced-order model (40)
are functions of , and . By (49)
38 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

Fig. 8. Schematic diagram of the experimental setup.

TABLE II
SPECIFICATIONS OF EXPERIMENTAL SETUP

Fig. 6. Bode diagrams of the centralized controller.

This criterion function is chosen to help the efficiency of the

operator because the vibration of the tower and the sway of the
load are automatically suppressed. The gain in the frequency
responses of the weighting functions and the multiple errors
are shown in Fig. 5(a) and (b). The term is the weighting
function for the robust stability, is the multiple error in the
up-and-down direction, is the error in the rotational direc-
tion, and and indicates the two errors in the cross di-
rection. The multiplicative errors in each direction are estimated
by extracting the subsystem of each direction from the full-order
model (34) and the centralized control design model (40). The
terms and are the weighting functions for the vibra-
tion of the tower, is for the boom angle, is for the
rotational angle, and and are the sway angles and
of the load, respectively. The terms and include the in-
tegrator for the positioning control. From Fig. 5(a), does not
fully cover the multiplicative errors. This is because 0.8 Hz and
1 Hz are the natural frequencies of the load and the first mode of
the tower. The bode diagram of the controller is shown in Fig. 6.
The order of the controller obtained is 26. Fig. 7 shows the bode
Fig. 7. Bode diagrams of the decentralized controller. diagram of the decentralized controller [6] for comparison.
TAKAGI AND NISHIMURA: CONTROL OF A JIB-TYPE CRANE MOUNTED ON A FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE 39

Fig. 9. Experimental results  : 45 ! 55(deg),  : 0 ! 45(deg).

40 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003

TABLE III
REFERENCES EXPERIMENTS

IV. EXPERIMENTS
Experimental Setup
Fig. 8 shows the schematic diagram of the experimental setup
and Table II shows its specification. The displacement of the top (a)
of the tower is assumed to be proportional to the strain, which is
detected by a strain gauge attached to the lower part of the tower.
The boom angle is detected by a potentiometer connected to the
shaft that is the center of rotation of the boom. The edge of the
boom is equipped with a potentiometer with a fork clipping the
load rope and the potentiometer detects the angle of the load
rope that is assumed to be straight [1]. The rotational angle is
detected by the rotary encoder in the motor of the rotation. The
continuous controller designed in Section III is digitized with a
sampling time of 4 ms.

Experimental Results
We perform the control experiments by giving objective
values for the boom angle and the rotational angle. The ramp (b)
reference input is applied because rapid motion by the step
reference input causes swaying of the load. Fig. 9 shows the
response using the objective values shown in Table III. The
boom angle is transferred to an angle counterclockwise from
the -axis

(50)

The solid line indicates the response by the centralized con-

troller, the broken line indicates that by the decentralized con-
troller [6] for comparison, the dash–dotted line indicates that
by PID controller, and the dotted line indicates the references.
Although it is seen from Fig. 9 that both controllers follow the
references of the boom and the rotational angle and that they
(c)
suppress the vibration of the tower and the sway of the load,
Fig. 10. Bode diagrams of the plant in the case in which the parameters vary.
control is not improved by the centralized controller.
(a) Nominal case. (b) l . (c) _ = =4.
It is difficult to adjust the control for the cross term arbitrarily
using control theory which is designed based on the gen-
eralized plant shown in Fig. 4. For example, varying the gain of V. ANALYSIS
the weighting function to increase the gain of the controller In this section, analysis is carried out to compare the ro-
causes an increase of the gain of the controller . This bust stability for parameter variations between the centralized
makes the control of the up-and-down direction worse because control system and the decentralized one. The parameters con-
the balance among and is disrupted. tributing to the variation are the distance in the direction be-
From Fig. 9(f) the centralized control does not have an ad- tween the center of mass of the tower top and the origin
vantage for the load sway of the up-and-down direction which and the rotational speed , both of which vary the coupling be-
is caused by centrifugal force. The controllability from the con- tween the up-and-down direction and the rotational direction.
trol input of the rotational direction to the sway angle of the Fig. 10(a)–(c) show the gain diagram of the centralized control
up-and-down direction vanishes by freezing (48). design model (40) in the nominal case, , and ,
TAKAGI AND NISHIMURA: CONTROL OF A JIB-TYPE CRANE MOUNTED ON A FLEXIBLE STRUCTURE 41

(a)

(a)
(b)
Fig. 11. Block diagrams of  analysis. (a) Decentralized control. (b) Central-
ized control.

respectively. The term has a large effect on the coupling be-

tween the directions. From Fig. 10(a) and (b), it is shown that the
coupling becomes small as reaches zero. From Fig. 10(c) it
is seen that increasing varies the coupling because the cen-
trifugal force adds to the up-and-down direction.
The term is represented using the real number parameter
as follows:

(51)
(b)
where is a nominal value. Furthermore, the governing equa-
Fig. 12. Results of  analysis. (a) Variation of l . (b) Variation of _ .
tion of the crane (30) includes . The term is represented
below using the real number parameter
In the experiment in Section IV, the ramp reference of the rota-
(52) tional speed is 20 deg/s. Equation (54) considers the variation of
the rotational speed, which is almost two times faster than the
experiment. The LFT representation is derived in similar ways;
Using (51) and (52), the tower crane model can be transformed
the result of analysis is shown in Fig. 12(b).
into the descriptor form as follows:
The robust stability scarcely improves using the centralized
controller.

VI. CONCLUSION
(53)
This paper has presented a comparison between decentral-
After this equation is transformed into LFT representation [9],
ized control and the centralized control to investigate the effi-
the of the decentralized control system is computed using the
ciency of the decentralized control. The centralized control de-
feedback loop diagram of Fig. 11(a), where is the structure of
sign model and the controller were newly designed. We compare
the perturbations, means the controller for the up-and-down
the response of the control experiment and the result of anal-
direction and means the controller for the rotational direc-
ysis considering the parameter variation which has a consider-
tion. The of the centralized control system is computed using
able effect on the coupling between directions. The control ex-
the feedback loop diagram of Fig. 11(b). Fig. 12(a) shows the
periment showed that it was difficult to improve the control per-
results of the analysis in the case in which the parameter
formance using centralized control because control theory
varies. The solid line indicates the result of the centralized con-
had difficulty adjusting the control arbitrarily for the cross-term.
troller and the broken line indicates that of the decentralized one.
The analysis showed that the robust stability in the case in
In the case in which the variation of is considered, the range
which the parameter varied indicated no difference between the
of the variation is
decentralized control and the centralized one. Thus, the decen-
tralized control was sufficiently effective for the control of the
(54) tower crane.
42 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CONTROL SYSTEMS TECHNOLOGY, VOL. 11, NO. 1, JANUARY 2003
REFERENCES
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[3] K. N. Groom, G. G. Parker, R. D. Robinett, and F. Leban, “Swing-free
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[6] , “Decentralized control of a tower crane,” in Proc. 1999 ASME
Design Engineering Technical Conf., Las Vegas, 1999, 8402.pdf.
[7] Y. Kazao, M. Namiki, M. Yamada, and H. Higashiyama, “Active vibra-
tion control of a tower using gyroscopic moment,” in Proc. 2nd Int. Conf.
Motion Vibration Control, vol. 1, 1994, pp. 144–149.
[8] B. Friedland, Advanced Control System Design. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996.
[9] M. Hirata, K. Z. Liu, and T. Mita, “Active vibration control of a 2-mass
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Kiyoshi Takagi received the Bachelor’s, Master’s,
and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from
Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, in 1997, 1999, and
2002, respectively.
He was a Research Fellow of the Japan Society for
the Promotion of Science in 2001–2002. He has been
with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial
Science and Technology since 2002. His research
interests include robust control, gain-scheduled
control and control of crane.
Dr. Takagi is a Member of Japan Society of Me-
chanical Engineers and The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers.
Hidekazu Nishimura (M’97) received the Bach-
elor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical
engineering from Keio University, Keio, Japan, in
1985, 1987, and 1990, respectively.
Since 1990, he has been on the Department of
Mechanical Engineering at Faculty of Engineering,
Chiba University, Chiba, Japan, where he is
currently Associate Professor on the Department
of Electronics and Mechanical Engineering. His
research interests include motion and vibration
control of dynamical systems and design of the
robust controller considering actuator constraints.
Dr. Nishimura is a Member of the Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers
and The Society of Instrument and Control Engineers.