The Optimization Study Of Model-Based Predictive Control Of Trailing Suction Hopper Dredger

With the rapid economic development, the dredging industry also made the greatprogress. As one of the most important tool of dredging industry, the trailing suction hopperdredger has the advantage of convenient and high efficiency. TSHD makes an important rolein the sea-route and rivers dredging, and it is playing a more and more important role in thelarge-scale reclamation construction, and then the TSHD tends to large-scale and automated.Meanwhile, the efficiency of TSHD also becomes a problem that can’t be ignored.Therefore, it is necessary to research of the TSHD dredging optimization, and it is helpful toimprove the market competitiveness of dredger, and promote the development of thedredging industry.This project is derived from the China Communications Construction Group keyLaboratory of Dredging open fund projects. This paper proposes a model-based predictivecontrol strategy to optimize the TSHD dredging process. Main works as follows:According to the complex process of TSHD dredging, the whole system is divided intofour subsystems, and this paper establishes the mathematical model to analysis，includesvelocity model, drag-head model, pump-pipeline model and hopper model, and describe therelationship between the models. This paper makes a detailed analysis on the velocity model,makes a parameter estimation and model validation of the velocity model with ship data.Then it establishes performance measure, and makes comparative analysis of simulateoutputs and measures, finally, the results show that the model is good enough to predictivecontrol.An model-based predictive control which combined with pattern search algorithm isused in this paper, to make the best performance of dredging and the most tons of dry soilthrough the best combination of the dredging inputs. The results show that the increasingproduction of dredging sand with MPC strategy in complete cycle is very significant, theproduction of unit time for tons of dry soil up by11%in average, than the optimizationstrategy to improve the proportion is only2.2%while it applied to the open sand dredging.While, MPC method reduces the overflow loss, when the TSHD dredges fine sand, theMPC method reduces the overflow loss by61%of the hopper process. and it reduces theoverflow loss by58%of the overall process. Now, environmental protection has caused more andmore attention, and it is conductive to the sea protection of reducing overflow losses through thedredgers dredging. This paper analyzes the feasibility strategy for the TSHD to increase dredgingproduction, the results of the study on dredging operations has an important theoreticalguidance, at present, there is less research of the dredging mechanism in our country. Thispaper raises a new issue in the studies of domestic dredging industry.