Attitude Correction System and Cooperative Control of Tunnel Boring Machine

Abstract

Recently, trajectory misalignment of tunnel boring machine (TBM) has become a key research area. Although TBMs have been extensively applied in tunneling, hunting motion remains due to inhomogeneous ground encountered during tunneling, TBM structures and ambiguity in attitude correction mechanism. In this paper, TBM attitude correction and motion are studied, and optimized fuzzy rule is obtained by taking into account various TBM constraints and the universe of fuzzy control; then, cooperative control over cylinders in various sections is proposed to reduce TBM trajectory tracking deviation from designed tunnel axis; moreover, a cascade control system combining outer-loop trajectory tracking and inner-loop pressure control is developed to enable unmanned automatic tunneling of the TBM. The practical application results reveal that the proposed system demonstrated accurate TBM attitude correction, high stability, strong engineering applicability and feasible real-time control.