Modeling, Simulation and Control of a Loading Bridge

This paper is focused on modeling, simulation and validation of the mathematical model of a loading bridge by comparison to the real system. A Lagrangian modeling method is presented to define a mathematical model of the loading-bridge dynamical system. Using the Matlab–Simulink simulation environment we have estimated the parameters and validated the model with regard to the experiments on the real device. The discrepancy between the simulated and the measured responses was adequate. Hence, we can conclude that the developed nonlinear model provides a satisfactory description of real system behaviour. Using the model, we designed a fuzzy controller for controlling load position and load height. The obtained controller has also been tuned and tested on the real device. Introduction 1 Description of the Loading Bridge Figure 1: A scheme of the loading bridge with annotated quantities: – driving force on the cart, – swing angle of the load, – rope length, – cart position, – cart mass, – load mass, – cart velocity, – load velocity, – horizontal component of load velocity, – vertical component of load velocity. Karer et al. Modeling, Simulation and Control of a Loading Bridge 166 SNE 25(3-4) – 12/2015 TN Parameter Value r 0.3183 m mt 0.2 kg m1 5.5 kg m2 0.143 kg Table 1: The measured parameters of the loading bridge. Here, r is the radius of the winch, mt is the mass of the winch, m1 denotes the mass of the cart and m2 the mass of the load. 2 Derivation of the Mathematical Model