Modeling of Offshore Crane and Marine Craft in Wave Motion

Safe handling of heavy payloads in an offshore environment requires careful planning and depends on the interaction between a crane and a vessel. This paper investigates the coupled dynamics between a multipurpose crane with payload, and an offshore carrying vessel. A classical multi-body model is derived using holonomic constraints and Newton-Euler kinetics. The resulting index-3 system of differential-algebraic equation (DAE) is transformed into an index-1 system and solved using commonly used numerical ode solvers. Numerical simulations are carried out to show that the proposed models behave in a physically realistic manner.