Contactless control of suspended loads for offshore installations: Proof of concept using magnetic interaction

Current offshore wind turbine installation and positioning methods require mechanical equipment attached on the lifted components and human intervention. The present paper studies the development of a contactless motion compensation technique by investigating a magnetically controlled pendulum. The technique involves the interaction of a...

Traffic efficient control of a water irrigation system

Water scarcity is a persistent global issue that requires effective solutions. One increasingly popular approach to address the distribution of freshwater in different regions is the utilization of Water Irrigation Systems (WIS). Due to their vital role in ensuring people's well-being, it is crucial to design a reliable infrastructure that can...

Dynamic Positioning around an alternative control point

Traditionally, the control point (CP) of a dynamically positioned vessel is located around its center of gravity (CoG). However, during offshore operations, other locations, such as the crane tip or gripper position, become more critical due to the load being located there. This thesis proposes shifting the control point from the CoG to an...

Economic Engineering for Supply Chain Management: Mitigating the Bullwhip Effect Using PID Control

The purpose of Supply Chain Management (SCM) is to maximize and stabilize the flow of goods through a supply chain. Disruptions to this flow, such as the Bullwhip Effect (BWE), have become increasingly severe and dynamic, challenging current methods for counteracting these disruptions. This thesis develops a systems and control framework for...

Model Predictive Control for Vehicle Platooning: A Practical Comparison against Traditional Methods

Due to the increase in traffic, road congestion has gone up. Vehicle platooning is a possible way to increase the capacity of a given road, by decreasing the distance between the vehicles in the platoon. At the moment, the control of vehicle platoons is commonly done using PDD controllers. The advantage of this is that it requires little...

Parameter Uncertainty Analysis in Precise Pointing Control of Flexible Spacecraft

This article focuses on the validation of a classical PID controller scheme for flexible spacecraft with regards to the effect of parameter uncertainty on system stability and pointing precision. A high-fidelity simulation environment with external disturbances was built in Simulink using a control-oriented model of an Earth-observing...

Optimal multi-model control for a Motion Compensated Gripper Frame: Installing XXL monopiles with a Motion Compensated Gripper Frame on a Dynamically Positioned vessel

Due to an increase demand for renewable and sustainable forms of energy, the offshore wind industry is growing rapidly. To make wind energy more cost-effective, new wind turbines are becoming larger in size and are placed further offshore. This results in deeper waters, making the installation more difficult. The current methodology uses a jack...

Low-cost Benchtop Equipment and Procedures for Organ-on-Chip Prototyping

The Organ on Chip (OoC) market is fast-growing and has the promise to drastically reduce the cost of developing drugs and the need for animal testing. However, the growth could be obstructed by the difficulties of scaling up production of developed prototypes. Most OoC prototypes are not suited for mass production because of the material used,...

PD-like Regulation of Mechanical Systems with Prescribed Bounds of Exponential Stability: the Point-to-Point Case

This letter discusses an extension of the famous PD regulator implementing point to point motions with prescribed exponential rates of convergence. This is achieved by deriving a novel global exponential stability result, dealing with mechanical systems evolving on uni-dimensional invariant manifolds of the configuration space. The...

Exciting efficient oscillations in nonlinear mechanical systems through Eigenmanifold stabilization

Nonlinear modes are a well investigated concept in dynamical systems theory, extending the celebrated modal analysis of linear mechanical systems to nonlinear ones. This letter moves a first step in the direction of combining control theory and nonlinear modal analysis towards the implementation of hyper-efficient oscillatory behaviors in...

System Parameter Identification of Thermal Generation Unit in the Mongolian Electrical Grid: Real-Life Frequency Response Test

Mongolian power grid (MPG) is becoming more eco-friendly as the power system is continuously integrating renewable energy, which reached 20% of the total installed capacity of Mongolia in 2020. The daily operation and the safety of the MPG have become very challenging because of increased levels of energy in the system. Therefore, the dynamic...

Exciting efficient oscillations in nonlinear mechanical systems through Eigenmanifold stabilization

Nonlinear modes are a well investigated concept in dynamical systems theory, extending the celebrated modal analysis of linear mechanical systems to nonlinear ones. The present work moves a first step in the direction of combining control theory and nonlinear modal analysis towards the implementation of hyper-efficient oscillatory behaviors...

The Dynamical Behaviour and Control of an Enterprise: Firm and Consumer as the System, Management as the Controller

This thesis develops a method to forecast the cash flows that determine the value of an enterprise. From a control engineers perspective, three stages arise to develop such a method: the research, the system and the control part. The research part presents the results of a control theoretic analysis of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) valuation...

Control and data-acquisition of a heater/temperature sensor

The goal of this bachelor thesis is to develop a control system that controls the temperature of a microthruster. This system also needs to acquire data for research. The microthruster contains a resistor that is used both as a heater and as a sensor. To facilitate the acquisition of data and the testing of the control system, a lab setup with a...

Design a complete active heave system based on an existing concept

The handling of a payload by a crane at sea poses numerous challenges. One of the main technical challenges is the movement of the vessel due to the hydrodynamic forces exerted by the waves. The resulting heave, pitch, and roll of the vessel results in time-varying crane-tip motion. This motion propagates to the payload through the rope and this...

Predictive control of irrigation canals – robust design and real-time implementation

Predictive control is one of the most commonly used control methods in a variety of application areas, including hydraulic processes such as water distribution canals for irrigation. This article presents the design and application of predictive control for the water discharge entering into an irrigation canal located in Spain. First, a...