Cutter Suction Dredgers (CSDs) are a special type of ships designed for construction and maintenance projects of ocean and offshore engineering. During the dredging operation, CSDs can excavate nearly all kinds of soil on the sea bed, and then the dredged materials with coarse particles need to be sucked up by a slurry pump and transported to a disposal area through a long-distance pipeline. In order to avoid sedimentation of slurry in pipeline transportation, the flow rate must be maintained within a reasonable range. Otherwise, the pipeline can be blocked when the slurry density is too high. In this paper, we present a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach to manipulate the flow rate of slurry in pipeline transportation for a CSD. To demonstrate the advantages of our proposed approach, we also implement three Proportional–Integral–Derivative (PID) controllers (i.e., conventional PID, Fuzzy-PID, and LQR-PID) to make a direct comparison. Moreover, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed approach in real scenarios, we have, in particular, built a slurry pipeline transportation platform. Both the simulation and experimental results show that our proposed MPC approach is more effective than other PID controllers in controlling the flow rate in the slurry pipeline transportation problem. The proposed approach can provide a guideline for the automated control of the slurry pump for a CSD.

绞吸式挖泥船（CSD）是一种特殊类型的船舶，设计用于海洋和近海工程的建设和维护项目。在疏operation作业期间，CSD可以在海床上挖掘几乎所有类型的土壤，然后需要用泥浆泵将带有粗颗粒的疏materials物料吸起，并通过长距离管道输送到处置区域。为了避免淤浆在管道运输中的沉淀，必须将流量保持在合理的范围内。否则，当浆液密度太高时，管道可能会阻塞。在本文中，我们提出了一种模型预测控制（MPC）方法来控制CSD管道中泥浆的流速。为了证明我们提出的方法的优势，我们还实现了三个比例积分微分（PID）控制器（即常规PID，Fuzzy-PID和LQR-PID）进行直接比较。此外，为了在实际场景中评估我们提出的方法的有效性，我们特别建立了一个泥浆管道运输平台。仿真和实验结果均表明，我们提出的MPC方法在控制泥浆管道运输问题中的流量方面比其他PID控制器更有效。所提出的方法可以为用于CSD的渣浆泵的自动控制提供指导。建立了泥浆管道运输平台。仿真和实验结果均表明，我们提出的MPC方法在控制泥浆管道运输问题中的流量方面比其他PID控制器更有效。所提出的方法可以为用于CSD的渣浆泵的自动控制提供指导。建立了泥浆管道运输平台。仿真和实验结果均表明，我们提出的MPC方法在控制泥浆管道运输问题中的流量方面比其他PID控制器更有效。所提出的方法可以为用于CSD的渣浆泵的自动控制提供指导。