4260 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRY APPLICATIONS, VOL. 50, NO. 6, NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2014 Electronic Control of a Novel System for Lifting Large Structures Fernando Nuño, Member, IEEE, Miguel J. Prieto, Member, IEEE, Juan Díaz, Member, IEEE, Pedro José Villegas Sáiz, Member, IEEE, Juan Carracedo, and Carlos Río Abstract—This paper presents a novel system that allows elevat- ing large structures by using a set of lifting towers that, adequately controlled with a synchronized operation, succeed in pulling the spatial mesh up to the height where it should stay. By doing so, the mounting of the spatial mesh can be carried out on the ground in an easier and, most important of all, safer way; it also gives rise to a shorter final time and, thereby, a cost reduction. This paper deals with the elevation system designed to pull the mesh up and specifically focuses on the electronic system that allows controlling their movement. Comments about the overall control that coordinates the operation of all of the mechanical structures involved are also provided. Index Terms—Control engineering, hydraulic systems, mechan- ical systems, pneumatic control equipment. I. I NTRODUCTION L ARGE warehouses and other industrial premises usually have high roofs built using a spatial mesh, which is later covered by some kind of roofing material. Usually these large- sized high roofs or structures with peculiar shapes are assem- bled once the support props have been installed. This involves having to carry out the roof assembly work at heights, which involves considerable risks and makes the tasks to accomplish difficult, thus resulting in longer times and higher costs to finish the complete structure. Occasionally, the assembly of the roof or structure is partially built on ground and later raised to its final location by means of several large cranes that pull the whole structure up until it lies on its final position (see Fig. 1). This is a delicate and rather dangerous operation, and this process has a limitation with regard to the size of the structures that can be hoisted or to the geometry thereof, depending on the maximum load that the crane boom can withstand, which makes it impossible to use this method for considerable large-sized structures (two or three times larger than a soccer field). Therefore, to assemble large- sized structures using traditional cranes, several different parts Manuscript received October 17, 2013; revised May 15, 2014; accepted July 10, 2014. Date of publication August 8, 2014; date of current ver- sion November 18, 2014. Paper 2013-IACC-830.R1, presented at the 2013 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL, USA, October 6–11, and approved for publication in the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON I NDUSTRY APPLICATIONS by the Industrial Automation and Control Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society. F. Nuño, M. J. Prieto, J. Díaz, and P. J. Villegas Sáiz are with the Área de Tecnología Electrónica, Universidad de Oviedo, 33204 Gijón, Spain (e-mail: fnuno@uniovi.es; mike@uniovi.es; jdiazg@uniovi.es; pedroj@uniovi.es). J. Carracedo and C. Río are with Montur Estan S.L., 33204 Gijón, Spain (e-mail: juan.carracedo@montur.net; carlos.rio@montur.net). Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIA.2014.2346704 Fig. 1. Crane elevation of warehousing roof. of the structure must be lifted separately and joined together once hoisted. In any case, the assembly operations for the different parts of the structure are complicated and must also be carried out at heights. Aiming to improve the quality of the work carried out and the safety of the workers involved, a novel elevation system is presented in this paper, consisting of several lifting towers around each of which a climbing ring pulls the mesh up by means of chains or cables anchored to the structure until it is left resting on its supporting points. Systems or devices based on a single lifting tower to hoist a small roof or structure are already known [1], [2], but they have two important limitations regarding the dimensions that they are able to lift and, in addition, the assembly is rather slow. The novel system presented in this paper is designed to achieve a fast and safe operation for lifting large-sized struc- tures, allowing the complete assembly of the structure to be made on the ground. The elevation system presented is based on the application of a patent [3], whose inventor is one the authors of this paper. The system is made up of a series of lifting towers and climbing rings fully suited in number and position to the size of the structure to be hoisted (see Fig. 2). Each tower has its own electronic system, which is connected to a central control computer that allows a joint, controlled, and synchro- nized operation of all the towers for gradually lifting the entire structure up to its final position. An Ethernet protocol/interface has been employed to communicate the electronic system of each tower with the central control computer that acts as the Ethernet server. 0093-9994 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.