Bridge Crane Research Articles

Program implementation of methodology for calculating and estimating residual life of frame of single-storey industrial building

The paper presents a description of the software and calculation complex that allows evaluatng the reliability, strength and stability of load-bearing structures of industrial buildings equipped with overhead cranes. It is built on the implementation of a consolidated algorithm aimed at the numerical solution of successively direct, inverse, and predictive problems of structural mechanics in a probabilistic formulation. The advantage of the complex is the possibility of forming for each design situation a large number of downloads, as well as the implementation and analysis of various schemes for their application with simultaneous action of components of the generalized load. The developed software and calculation complex acts as a tool for solving problems of computer processing of data obtained during a series of full-scale surveys of an industrial building equipped with bridge cranes aimed at determining the amount of residual life and the period of its trouble-free operation. Automating the calculation of indicators of reliability and durability in the dynamics of changes in their values, including in subsequent periods of operation of the facility, it becomes possible to predict emergencies and take timely measures to prevent them.

Topological Optimization and Finite Element Method Analysis of Wheels on the Carts Winch Bridge Crane

Topological Optimization and Finite Element Method Analysis of Wheels on the Carts Winch Bridge Crane

GEOMATIC TECHNIQUES FOR MONITORING AND VERIFYING OF THE WEAR CONDITION OF THE RUNWAYS OF THE BRIDGE CRANES

Abstract. Monitoring and diagnostics of the lifting systems in the field of rail transport play a fundamental role in order to enable it to function safely providing any deviations from the expected behaviour of the regular conditions. The transit of heavy convoys naturally tends to worsen the geometrical position and, of consequence, it is necessary to identify some monitoring techniques that allow to establish the maintenance of infrastructure in accordance with the standards UNI ISO 9927-1 and in according to ISO 12488-1 must be verify the tolerance for wheels and travel and traversing tracks; for a crane runway these are for example the span, the position and height of the rails.. Especially the ground infrastructure related to the bridge crane requires periodic checks. The purpose of this paper is to identify suitable geomatics techniques for monitoring of the runways of the bridge cranes. To achieve this aim, the paper is divided in more sections. In the first part, the paper describes the area involved in the monitoring and standards in the field of monitoring the wear of the rails. In the second part, the paper describes the criteria and regulations for checking the wear of the bridge cranes using several geomatics techniques, tool and software.

Field measurement and evaluation of noise and vibrations induced by bridge cranes in full-scale over-track buildings.

Over-track buildings have been increasingly favored in the construction of metro depots and freight depots in China in the last decade due to advantages of intensive utilization of land resources and high-profits. However, due to the relatively heavy transportation mass and high-operating frequency of bridge cranes, over-track buildings are often complained by occupants for annoying noise and vibrations. So far this issue is rarely concerned and the characteristics of noise and vibrations under bridge crane loading remain unclear. In this study, field measurements of two full-scale over-track buildings, including a seven-story building over a metro depot and a three-story building over a freight depot, were conducted. Vibration characteristics of both the structure and the bridge crane were obtained. The transmission of vibrations from bridge crane system to the over-track building was obtained by transfer function (TF) of vibration from the column bracket towards the outdoor platform or building floors. The structure-borne noise inside the building was also captured and evaluated. The effect of bridge crane operational parameters (loading capacity and running velocity) and structural dynamic properties (non-structural components) on system responses was further discussed. Results show that the bridge crane-induced vibrations are comparable to the levels of train-induced vibrations. Besides, both buildings tested in this study suffer from unacceptable structure-borne noise, although the building vibration is acceptable. We recommend to carefully examining design of new over-track buildings to avoid annoying indoor noise and improve the living or working environment of occupants. It is demonstrated that vibrations of over-track buildings are more sensitive to running velocity than load capacity of bridge crane. It could be expected that the future increase of velocity will worsen the noise and vibration environment of over-track buildings. Furthermore, it is seen that non-structural components would remarkably affect dynamic responses of the building.

Anti‐shake positioning algorithm of bridge crane based on phase plane analysis

In this study, the dynamic model of bridge crane system is established based on Lagrange equation. The transfer function of crane running system is derived. A new crane anti-swaying scheme different from traditional mechanical anti-shake strategy is proposed and it is based on phase plane analysis algorithm. By the adaptive speed planning method, the industrial grade bridge crane can calculate different motion trajectories online without any off-line optimisation calculation under the given acceleration and maximum speed limit conditions. At the same time, the industrial grade bridge crane realises the purpose of anti-sway and positioning of the crane. The field experiment results show that the swing of the crane is obviously suppressed and the positioning accuracy fully meets the industrial requirements when the load of the crane reaches the target position.

Study on the measurment of hoisting mechanism efficiency for bridge crane

With the bridge crane as a research object, the problem of hoisting mechanism energy consumption and the need of detecting energy consumption are studied by using the black box theory and the serial theory. After the need of measuring reducer power is analyzed emphatically, a plan that measuring simultaneously power of reducer torque and rotational speed is finally proposed.

METHODS OF NOISE REDUCTION OF BRIDGE CRANE RAILS

Bridge cranes of various lifting capacities are intensively used in various industries and construction industries. Bridge cranes are a combination of diverse noise sources, such as electric motors and gearboxes for lifting and moving carriages, wheelsets and rails. One of the intensive sources of radiation of sound energy creating excess over sanitary standards are the rails. It should be noted that it is possible to reduce the noise levels of this particular source by installing vibration-damping materials, which actually provide not only a reduction in vibration levels, and, therefore, noise in the sources themselves, i.e. in an active way, but at the same time perform the function of sound insulation.

Research on Grab Swing Control Method Based on Time Delay Filter

Grab swing during crane acceleration and deceleration will have an impact on work efficiency and safety. In this regard, the swing amplitude of the grab during the operation must be controlled within a certain range. According to the mechanical analysis of bridge crane’s grab, the mathematical model between crane’s horizontal movement and grab swing is established. A time delay filter technique is applied to shape the acceleration control signal, thus effectively control the swing angle of the grab. Simulation results show that the control method with time delay filter could eliminate the swing of the grab even without measuring the swing angle, and is feasible for engineering applications.

The real-time vision measurement of multi-information of the bridge crane’s workspace and its application

The measurement of the workspace information of the bridge crane is the premise of its intelligent control and safety monitoring. Some existing vision systems can only obtain very limited information, like swing angle of the payload. In this paper, a monocular vision measurement method is proposed to acquire multi-information of the payload off-centered angle, the payload rotation angle and the obstacle height. A hierarchical calibration method is designed to divide the large lifting height of the crane into multi-layers. At each layer, four markers are fixed on a plate symmetrically to obtain the center position of hook via the Blob analysis and ellipse fitting algorithm. After calibration, two fitting equations of the payload lifting height and the pixel coordinate of vertical lifting center are established corresponding to the pixel distance between two markers and the height of each layer. On the base of the two fitting equations, the measurement models of the payload off-centered angle, the payload rotation angle and the obstacle height are established combining with the geometric relations in the crane’s workspace, respectively. Finally, a crane prototype is established to validate the effectiveness of the vision measurement models. Moreover, the strategies of auto-centering control and automatic obstacle avoidance are designed utilizing the vision measurement system. The corresponding experiments were carried out and achieved a good performance. The research results of this paper have practical significance to intelligent control and safety monitoring of the crane in future.

A New Geodetic Method of Examination of Geometrical Conditions of a Crane Bridge

Safety is one of the key aspects related to crane-based material transport. In order to ensure safe crane operation and material transport, it is necessary to meet certain geometrical conditions. The authors addressed the geometrical conditions of a crane bridge, a substantial crane component. The paper presents the method to compute displacement components of points on the top of a bridge crane relative to their design position. Theoretical considerations presented in the paper have been verified on simulated data. Keeping in mind the proper operation of a crane bridge, the authors proposed in the analyses the use of geometrical relations (perpendicular and parallel character) between end carriages and girders, not previously included in the available literature. The obtained results show that the presented method may be successfully applied to check the geometry of a crane bridge.

Dynamical Model for Determination of Horizontal Forces on Crane Runway during Motion of the Crane

During a motion of an overhead travelling crane on the crane runway, horizontal forces between the crane and the crane runway girder occur. The reason of these forces can be the acceleration or deceleration of the crane and then most significant part of these horizontal forces is skewing of the crane. There are several methods for calculation of these forces. These methods depend mainly on the chosen computational model. Some comparison of these methods was made in a past conference by the author of this article. The most significant load caused by motion of crane is the skewing. In the past, the cause of the skewing was considered to be caused by different speeds of the end-carriages of the crane which result to the horizontal transverse loads of the crane runway. In the present, the skewing of crane is defined as the motion of the overhead bridge crane with the constant velocity, but with the angle relative to the crane runway. It means that the overhead bridge crane is angled relative to the crane runway and moves with constant velocity. During this motion, the crane wheels are angled relative to the rail of the crane runway and the transverse forces occur on crane wheels. But this situation can occur also during the acceleration or deceleration of the crane. Present standards do not take into account this situation. A dynamical model is presented in this paper, describing the motion of the overhead double bridge crane during its acceleration. The dynamical model includes things which can influence the motion of the crane, the forces acting on crane wheels. The model thus describes the behaviour of the crane during acceleration in general and enables to determinate the horizontal transverse forces. The basic assumption of this model is that there is no contact between the rim of the crane wheel and the rail of the crane runway.

ACCIDENTAL TORSION WITH INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS – OVER‐CONSERVATIVE RULES IN EC8

ABSTRACTThis paper is related to seismic design of industrial steel buildings, such as warehouses and plant skeleton structures. Designers will be encouraged to skip rules of EC8 under certain circumstances, which lead to over‐conservative results.Seismic design according to EC8 contains a general clause on accidental torsion. There, the possibility of an offset of the resulting masses within a storey and the spatial variation of the seismic motion is considered. Consequently, this leads to an unintended torsion (e.g. rotation of the structure about its vertical axis). Different magnitudes of additional loads in the vertical bracing planes may follow depending on the location of the bracing in the structure. Even in the favorable case of the bracing being located in the outmost walls (which is given in typical warehouses anyway), the bracing forces are to be increased by a factor of 1.3 according to the provisions of EC8 lateral force method. In this paper, the determination of the bracing forces is followed in two examples of industrial buildings, a warehouse with a crane bridge and a plant skeleton structure with heavy equipment on different levels. Based on these examples it will be shown, that the provisions of EC8 are way too conservative. Advice is given, on how the designer can come up with robust, but much lower forces for the vertical bracing planes.

Overhead Travelling Crane Construction Deflection Measurements with Telematic Approach

Abstract Transport has always been a fundamental impulse for the development of civilization. Issues related to the regularity of operation of technical systems, in the last decade have become important issues being considered from both the point of view, as well as economics. Today the major threat in the operational reliability constitutes intensification of the machine and equipment use leading to excessive degradation. In automated manufacturing processes where the material handling operations are realized by the cranes, the safety as both devices and operating people constitute important factor. The main purpose of the article was focused on the set of issues including the material handling devices (MHD) reliability shaping problem especially presents work in progress towards development the MHD condition assessment system with using telematic approach. In the article author, special care was enclosed to MHD devices with strength human factor interaction and relatively large construction, so the overhead travelling crane was chose. The object of the statement constitutes an attempt of collecting the knowledge concerning a possibility of use modern measurement systems to monitoring crane bridge deflection. All tests and considerations were conducted on the double girder overhead travelling crane with hosting capability 1000 kg and bridge span 8000 mm.

Investigation of the influence of the length of the rope suspension of the bridge crane and the length of displacement of the cargo in the controlled sway mode on the time of displacement

The formulas for a complete analytical solution of the problem of moving cargo on a pendulum suspension of constant length along a given trajectory in a plane setting are presented. To set the desired trajectory as a time dependence of the linear horizontal coordinate of the cargo in a limited time interval, two-point Hermite polynomials are used. The field of application of the method is the automatic control of the movement of bridge and gantry cranes, as well as modeling of crane working processes. The application is limited to small angles of deviation of the cargo rope of the bridge crane from the gravitational vertical. The method makes it possible to quickly synthesize the optimal trajectory of the point of cargo suspension movement, which accurately provides the required trajectory of cargo movement. For a series of constant values of the maximum acceleration developed by the point of suspension of the cargo during a single transient process, graphs of the moving time dependences from moving length and cargo rope length are revealed. The functions obtained are not smooth and have a fracture. This makes it impractical to approximate them using the regression equation, due to the high error of the latter. The resulting graphs can be used to determine the time of movement of the cargo depending on the specified length of moving, the length of the cargo rope and the maximum acceleration developed by the drive of the cargo suspension.

Обоснование выбора расчётных схем элементов металлоконструкций грузовых тележек кранов мостового типа на основе универсальной компоновочной схемы

Обоснование выбора расчётных схем элементов металлоконструкций грузовых тележек кранов мостового типа на основе универсальной компоновочной схемы

Failure analysis of an involute spline coupling of an overhead bridge crane

The present study concerns the failure analysis for a 15-tons bridge crane. In particular, the investigation is performed through a numerical simulation of the whole system, in order to extract the displacement reached when the system undergoes to the maximum in service payload. The failed element is one of the two spline coupling used for transmitting the torque from the gearbox to the drums, responsible for winding the cables.In addition, it is also presented an estimation of the wear phenomenon, by comparing the actual material performance with the once generally considered in literature. At the end, some advices to overcome the problem are introduced.

СРАВНИТЕЛЬНЫЙ АНАЛИЗ РАСЧЕТНО-ДИНАМИЧЕСКИХ МОДЕЛЕЙ ПОРТОВЫХ КРАНОВ НА ОСНОВЕ ОДНО- И ДВУМЕРНЫХ КОНЕЧНЫХ ЭЛЕМЕНТОВ

The finite element method is widely used in strength calculations of machine-building structures and has a significant list of basic finite elements used to build the discrete finite element computable dynamic models of load-lifting cranes. The article describes static and dynamic characteristics of a computable dynamic model (CDM). CDM is designed to determine stiff features (developing stiffness matrix) and to define the deflected mode of the structures by using different means in structural mechanics, which have been chosen by a designer. Dynamic parameters are determined according to CDM to describe eigen and forced oscillations of crane structures under external action. The quality analysis of CDM of bearing metal structures of bridge cranes built on the basis of bar-shaped open and closed profiles and plate finite elements is based on comparison of the total flexural rigidity of the girders and eigen frequencies and eigenforms of oscillations of their CDM. The general methodology for building equations of motion for crane systems with many (n) degrees of freedom is based on their bar and plate finite elements, the latter are based on Kirchhoff theory of plates. Comparative analysis of the eigenforms of oscillations of the plate and bar CDM of crane with 130/32 t and 33.5m span has been given, the advantages of two types of CDM important for design analysis of strength and seismic resistance in designing bridge cranes are revealed. There has been substantiated the need to develop new methods of calculating finite element models taking into account the dimensional effect. The structures are recommended to regard as unified dimensional systems allowing for different types of non-linearity.

Fault diagnosis system of bridge crane equipment based on fault tree and Bayesian network

A spreader is an important part of a crane used on wharfs for loading and unloading operations. Because of the spreader’s complex structure, poor operation environment, frequent collision accidents, etc., breakdowns and faults often occur, and the causes for the faults are complex. Based on the historical fault data of the spreaders accumulated during their online service for 13 years, by determining top events and boundary conditions using the induction and deduction methods, a complete spreader fault tree is built with three layers of fault phenomena, fault classification, and fault causes. Then, based on the fault tree, a Bayesian network for the spreader fault diagnosis is constructed by establishing the transformation algorithm from the fault tree to the Bayesian network. The junction tree method is used for accurate inference of spreader faults based on the Bayesian network. Finally, a spreader fault diagnosis system is developed, and a case verification is carried out. The system would be of great help to crane operation engineers in fault diagnosis, and it effectively uses historical fault data to support subsequent maintenance.

RATIONAL DESIGN OF SHORT-SPAN INDUSTRIAL BUILDING ROOF FOR RECONSTRUCTION CONDITIONS

Purpose. Recently, the demand for reuse of industrial buildings that have not been in operation for some time has been increasing in Ukraine. Herewith, quite often the design of their roof requires the complete replacement and renovation by using modern roofing materials to meet the requirements of new government standards. Therefore, the choice and justification of the rational design of steel roof on the example of a short-span industrial building (18-24 m span), which is planned to be returned to exploitation after idle time, is the main goal of this publication. The object of the analysis is an unheated building equipped with bridge cranes of a small capacity (up to 10 tons). Me-thodology. To achieve this purpose, the comparison of structural variants of a roof steel collar tie was performed. Such variants include two types of collar tie cross-section –a lattice truss and a solid I-girder. The first type was analyzed for four possible types of section of elements – double angles, a roll-welded square profile, an electric-welded round tube and a rolled round tube. The second type was analyzed for two possible types of section – rolled I-section made of normal strength steel and fabricated sections of thin-gage high-strength steel. The design variants were compared on the basis of a numerical analysis of their work using the finite element method based on the software complex SCAD for Windows. Findings. According to the research results it should be stated that for the conditions of the city of Dnipro the most cost-effective variant of the steel collar tie cross section for the short-span industrial building is the truss made of electric-welded round tubes. Also the construction of collar tie made of roll-welded square profiles or fabricated section of thin-gage high-strength steel is considered quite effective. Originality. The research presented in the publication allows estimating the possibility and economic efficiency of usage for various types of cross-sections for the collar tie of a steel non-insulated roof of the industrial building for the reconstruction conditions in the Dnipro-city. Practical value. A practical estimation of mass and cost parameters for steel collar ties of various types has been carried out, and the methodology for conducting such estimation has been substantiated.

An Efficient Adaptive Hierarchical Sliding Mode Control Strategy Using Neural Networks for 3D Overhead Cranes

In this paper, a new adaptive hierarchical sliding mode control scheme for a 3D overhead crane system is proposed. A controller is first designed by the use of a hierarchical structure of two first-order sliding surfaces represented by two actuated and un-actuated subsystems in the bridge crane. Parameters of the controller are then intelligently estimated, where uncertain parameters due to disturbances in the 3D overhead crane dynamic model are proposed to be represented by radial basis function networks whose weights are derived from a Lyapunov function. The proposed approach allows the crane system to be robust under uncertainty conditions in which some uncertain and unknown parameters are highly difficult to determine. Moreover, stability of the sliding surfaces is proved to be guaranteed. Effectiveness of the proposed approach is then demonstrated by implementing the algorithm in both synthetic and real-life systems, where the results obtained by our method are highly promising.