Due to the diverse development of lifting operations,the lifting objects of cranes have changed from traditional mass point payload to distributed mass payload.Aiming at the problems of the payload large swing angle suppression and trolley positioning control of overhead crane when lifting the distributed mass payload,two methods based on sliding mode control theory were proposed to eliminate the payload swing and achieve the trolley quick positioning.Firstly,the effects of the structural characteristics of the lifting object of the overhead crane,the driving characteristics of the trolley motor,the friction resistance and the random disturbance in the environment on the lifting operation were considered comprehensively,a nonlinear double-pendulum dynamics model of the distributed mass lifting system of the overhead crane was established.Then,the nonlinear double pendulum dynamic ordinary sliding mode controller(OSMC)and hierarchical sliding mode controller(HSMC)for the distributed mass payload system of the overhead crane were designed,and the stability of the closed-loop system was proved by Lyapunov function and Barbalat lemma.Finally,the performance difference between OSMC and HSMC in the control of distributed mass payload anti-swing was studied by numerical simulation.The simulation and research results show that compared with the OSMC,the HSMC not only achieve accurate positioning of the trolley within 12 s,but also realize fast suppression of the distributed mass payload in the swing range from 5°to 9°,and complete the effective control of the state variables of the system.Meanwhile,the comparison results show that HSMC has strong robustness and anti-interference to the internal and external disturbance changes of the overhead crane system.