Crane feedback control in offshore moonpool operations

A novel feedback controller for cranes employed in heavy-lift offshore marine operations is proposed. The control objective is to reduce the hydrodynamic slamming load acting on a payload at water-entry of moonpool operations; at the same time the values of the wire tension must be kept within acceptable bounds. The effectiveness of the proposed controller is shown experimentally; the experiments are performed on a scale model and show improvements with respect to a previous feedforward controller.