7/17/2019 Design Gantry Crane Calculations

International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)

ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December-2014

generator that provides electric power necessary to feed the

electric motors used to activate the mobility system and the
trolley mechanism. Finally, the crane is operated through
the control unit that can be used manually.
While designing the crane groups, it is required to
design and then optimally select components such as the
girder, the pillars, the braces, the wheeled carriage, the
crane hook lifting and lowering mechanism, the wire ropes,
tie rods, and wheel mounted assembly. Throughout the
force analysis, the load has been applied at various positions
of the girder especially at the center to generate uniformly
distributed moment and stresses over the crane chassis
 
structure which is designed as I- shaped cross sectional steel
Fig.1. Conventional fixed-height single-girder gantry crane  beams cut and welded to provide the proposed chassis
structure.
II.  PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF THE CRANE CHASSIS
Considering the problem of moving heavy weights inside a
workshop, the single-girder fixed-height wheel-mounted
gantry crane provides the most flexible lifting solution
offered by different styles of cranes especially for limited
working areas because it can move to cover most of the
work shop area in addition to its low cost and feasible use. It
also avoids many problems that may appear when using
other equipment such as noise when using a forklift,
complex fixation into ground and limited working volume
 problems when using the I-beam gantry crane, and complex
structure and the workshop construction limitations
 problems when using an overhead crane. The technical
specifications of the gantry crane whose design is presented
in this paper are as follows: loading capacity is 10 tons,
girder height is 3.5 m, pillars' span equals 2.5 m. The main
factors that should be taken into consideration during the
design are the ease of installation to make sure that   all
components can be assembled with available tools, the ease
e e
of operation to reduce injuries and increase productivity,
and finally the versatility and safety to assure feasible
operation and economical way to lift loads anywhere in a
facility. Some other factors should be considered such as
keeping minimum cost as possible, easy to move
everywhere, friendly using by the low experienced
operators to provide high performance, reliability, and easy Fig.2. Proposed design of the gantry crane chassis
steering.
After proper calculations, the results for static as well as
Considering the requirements of the designed crane
dynamic analysis ar e obtained. In static analysis, crane’s
main construction, the main groups of the crane are the
self weight, payload, hook weight and trolley weight are
crane chassis, the crane mobility system, the power unit, the
crane electrical system, load display, alarming system, the considered whereas velocities, acceleration and braking are
crane control unit, and the trolley mechanism that includes considered in dynamic analysis.
the wheeled carriage and the hoisting mechanism. The crane Calculating for the preliminary design for the crane chassis
chassis structure constitutes the girder, the pillars, the structure, empirical formulae from [9] are considered such
 braces, and the wheel mounted joints (or the base), as that they are chosen to be compatible with standards
shown in Fig.2. For added strength and balance, the girder requirements for gantry cranes manufactures [10-12].
and pillars of the gantry crane are supported using two types General information about the crane are that the crane
of braces; lateral braces and side braces. The gantry crane is maximum load capacity is 10 tons, hoisting speed is 1
equipped with four wheel mounting assemblies two of m/min. and the speed gear reduction transmission ratio
which are used to drive the crane while the other two are ranges from 3 to 5 over the system of pulleys in the load
used for crane steering constituting the mobility system of lifting and lowering mechanism. The design and part
the crane. The mobility system enables the user to move the selection is explained in the following subsections.
crane within the work area inside the workshop with the aid
of a proper crane braking system. The assemblies of the  A.  Crane Chassis
wheels can be fixed in the bottom of the crane chassis The crane chassis consists of the girder, base, pillars, and
through four wheel-mounted joints at the base of the crane  braces. For the design of the gantry crane chassis, some
chassis. The power unit is generally a diesel engine driven

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7/17/2019 Design Gantry Crane Calculations
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December-2014

factors should be taken into consideration. It is important to  D.  Power Unit and Motor Selection
note that the moment is generally uniformly distributed Considering power calculations, a 7 KW diesel engine
across the girder when the load is at the crane central axis derived generator is used as a power unit for the crane to
and maximum on one of the legs when the load is at the feed the four 0.75 KW reduced electric motors that are used
other leg of the crane. Therefore, good support at both legs in the mobility system, the 3 KW reduced electric motor
is necessary to keep the system in balance. Lateral braces at that is used in the hoisting mechanism, and the 1 KW
the girder in addition to   cross side braces at the top half and reduced electric motor that is used to drive the wheeled

 bottom
On the half of hand,
other the pillars
it isoffer a solution
intended for such
to have problem.
the center of carriage.
swing All speeds
as well areeffects.
as inertia limited to 0.015 m/s to avoid load
gravity of the system located as near as can be to the bottom
of the crane chassis structure, and so the center of mass III.  COMPUTER MODELING AND DESIGN VERIFICATION  
obligates the system to remain in balance, regardless of the
In this stage of the design procedure, it is important to
magnitude of the load, which is expected to be less than the make sure that the crane chassis design is applicable. A
total mass of the crane. This can be achieved through complete stress analysis of the crane chassis structure is
designing the chassis structure base to cover an area that  performed using a computer model that has been developed
keep appropriate position of the center of gravity along the for the crane chassis with all forces, moments and
chassis central axis. constraints distributed on it to calculate von mises stresses,
Other factors to be considered during the design of the first principal stresses and third principal stresses that
crane can be summarized in the resistance due to load influence the crane. The results show acceptable values of
swing, the influence of the wind, and the acceleration of the safety factors and strains, as shown in Fig. 3 to Fig.11.
moving masses. However, these factors can be ignored
considering lack of wind effect due to indoor operation, and
choosing low speeds for load hoisting and movement.
Another important factor is to ensure the operating safety as
a simple mistake can lead to tragic accidents most of which
are caused by unsecured load and load capacity exceeded
[13]. The chassis different parts are standard steel parts that
are connected using welding and bolted joints to form the
final chassis structure. All structure parts, welding and
 bolted joints are checked for shear stresses, crushing
stresses and bending moment stresses using the
recommended factors of safety [9].

 B.  Trolley Mechanism

The trolley mechanism consists of wheeled carriage and 
the hoisting mechanism equipped with a ratchet wheel brake
system to hold the load at different elevated positions. The
carriage drive mechanism consists of a reduced electric
motor, which through a fixed coupling, drives an under-
hung wheeled carriage that moves on the rails fixed to the
girder. The load raising and lowering mechanism consists of Fig. 3. Von Mises stress
a drum, system of pulleys, speed gear reduction, and an
electric motor. It also includes a hook meant to be attached
to the load and steel wire ropes. All parts and mechanisms
are chosen using formulae from [9] according to the load
such that they are chosen to be compatible with standards
recommended for gantry cranes manufactures [10-12].

C.  Crane Mobility System

The basic task of the mobility system is to enable the
user to move the crane within the work area. The mobility
system of the crane includes two main systems; the crane
driving system, which is used to move the crane forward or
 backward, and the crane steering system, which is used to
direct the crane motion. Each system depends on two DC-
reduced electric motors to accomplish its task. The mobility
system is controlled using the control unit through the
electric wire system and the control devices. A braking
system is used to stop the crane or to reduce its speed.

Fig. 4. First p rincipal stress

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7/17/2019 Design Gantry Crane Calculations
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December-2014

Fig.5. Third principal stress Fig. 8. Equivalent strain

Fig. 9. First principal strain

Fig. 6. Displacement

Fig.10. Third principal strain

Fig. 7. Safety factor

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7/17/2019 Design Gantry Crane Calculations
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December-2014

IV.  MATHEMATICAL MODEL FOR THE CRANE

Recent research in the domain of gantry crane
development focuses primarily on developing efficient
techniques for load position control. However, before
adopting a control strategy, system dynamics modeling
needs be identified. Gantry cranes which are commonly
used in workshops and factories usually   incorporates a
carriage, which translates in a horizontal plane with the load
attached to it by a cable, whose length can be varied using
the hoisting mechanism. In this common type of gantry
cranes, the load with the cable can be treated as a one-
dimensional pendulum, shown in Fig.11, with one-degree-
of-freedom sway. If the swing exceeds a proper limit, it Fig.11. Gantry crane model 
must be damped or the operation must be stopped until the
swing dies out.
Here we deduce a linearized model for the crane with solving the above equation yields:
nonlinearities, such as coulomb friction, assumed to be not
included as the friction results in high steady-state error of
 position control [2]. Also for obtaining a solution of the
dynamic equation that represent the behavior of the system,
 both acceleration and hence inertia forces are considered
zero. The load hanged at the end of a wire, which is
assumed always tensioned under the load weight as can be (4)
observed from Fig.11. At a particular time t 1, the carriage
moves to position  x1, the force that has been applied on the In attempts to reach load position control with acceptable
carriage is u, the mass of the carriage is mC , the mass of anti-swing crane operation, gantry crane controller can be
load is m L, the length of the wire is l, and the angle between commonly either a classical proportional derivative (PD)
the wire and vertical axis is θ . controller
t based on delayed-position feedback [7-8] or
Fuzzy Logic Controller (FLC) [14-16]. For the light duty
Mathematical model for the crane is derived such that cranes, a skilful operator is usually responsible for operating
the dynamics of the system is analyzed by splitting the the crane such that the load is moved from a start position to
system into two parts, which are carriage and load through  end position without swing. Considering that the crane is
developing their free body diagrams. Therefore, the manually operated and that the electric motors used in the
dynamic equations that represent the system are as follows trolley mechanism and the mobility system are selected
[2]:
specifically with low speeds, sway angle is assumed to be
small and the nonlinear equation (4) becomes less complex
and good to work with. Based on the linear model of the
(1) gantry crane, the objective of the crane controller design
here is to move the load from point to point and to minimize
the load swing that can be considered here as neglected
effect.
(2) Matlab Simulink is used here to model the system by
developing the respective block functions according to
Deriving the equations in the state space format, we obtain: crane dynamic setting requirements and therefore an open-
loop Simulink setup is used, as shown in Fig.12. The
resultant load oscillation for a 5N amplitude pulse input
during 1 sec time duration is shown in Fig. 13. The main
advantage of using such input is to present the problem in
(3)
real form especially in case of considering ideal conditions
and therefore neglecting some factors as the effect of load

swing
results, and damping
shown in Fig. friction [17].
13, it can From loadthat
be concluded oscillation
the load
swing is within an acceptable range [2] without any further
requirements for anti-swing special controller.

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7/17/2019 Design Gantry Crane Calculations
International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December-2014

control the two motors which drive the carriage and load
hoisting mechanism. The control circuit components
include breed board, wires with pushbuttons, 2 DC- geared
motors' drivers, resistors, encoder sensors, limit switch
sensors and 12v battery used as a power source. Each motor
is attached to two digital pins from the Arduino, one of
digital pins is used to control the speed through pulse width

modulation
motor shaft (PWM)
rotation variations
direction. and the other
However, to control
in this design the
the
motor speeds are selected such that their speeds are kept
low and constant to avoid load swing and inertia forces.
Two twelve step rotary encoders are used for controlling
the horizontal distance travelled by the carriage and the
 
vertical distance travelled by the wire during lifting or
Fig.12. Simulink Setup for gantry Crane lowering the load, same installation procedures from [18] is
used.

Fig. 13. Load oscillation for step input

V.  PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION AND CONTROL

CIRCUIT VERIFICATION 
In order to verify the proposed load position control circuit,,
a prototype has been built for the gantry crane. The  
 blueprints of the gantry crane design, discussed in the
 previous section, provided us with detailed dimensions that Fig. 14. Gantry crane prototype
have been used to build a scaled prototype in the department
of mechanical equipment, MTC, as shown in Fig. (14).The
main construction of the prototype are the crane chassis that
consists of the girder, base, legs, braces, and trolley
mechanism that consists of the carriage and the load
hoisting mechanism. The main technical specifications of
the prototype can be summarized as the girder height is 110
cm, the crane span width is 90 cm while the crane can move
in a plane using the two driving wheels along with two
steering wheels mobility system. The chassis of the
 prototype is a steel frame with two kinds of braces that
assure the achieving of the proper balance and support of
the crane during operation. Attached to the girder, a
wheeled carriage that runs on rails fixed along the girder to
move the load. The carriage is a four wheels metal cart that
moves on rails fixed along the girder through gear
arrangement that is powered by an onboard electric motor,
as shown in Fig.(15) . The carriage hosts the winch reduced Fig. 15. Prototype trolley mechanism (derived by two DC motors)
electric motor that lifts the load through a system of pulleys.
In the prototype, the load position is controlled VI.  IMPLEMETATION OF FULL SCALE CRANE  
using the control circuit that has been proposed in the The proper design, safe operation, and optimum use of
 previous section to make sure that the load position control overhead and gantry cranes are governed by the American
strategy works properly. Arduino Uno is used here to make Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) standards and
control for crane prototype trolley mechanism. The the Occupational Safety and Health Administration
recognition and control algorithms are written in micro-C (OSHA) regulations. All design reports, blueprints,
 programming language. The control algorithms are used to drawings and calculation reports resulted from work

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International Journal of Engineering Research & Technology (IJERT)
ISSN: 2278-0181
Vol. 3 Issue 12, December-2014

 presented in this paper have been passed to a contractor The chassis is considered as the skeleton of the crane since
that is compliant to gantry crane manufacturers’ it holds all the crane systems together. It consists of the
requirements. The contractor builds the crane using a dated girder, 10 knees, 2 pillars, and four wheel mounted joints
working plan according to implements requirements  base. The girder is made of a steel I-beam connected to the
criteria from [9-12]. The crane consists of five main two crane pillars that are made of hollow square cross
components which are the crane chassis, the hoisting section beam, which are supported together by 10 knees
mechanism, the crane mobility system, the control unit, and made also of hollow square cross section beam with the

the power unit.  base

weldedstructure made
and bolted of steel
to form I-beam designed
the required cross-sectional parts
base shape.
Figure 16 shows the crane trolley mechanism that
is assembled with the chassis. The mechanism is powered
using two electric motors assigned for hoisting the load and
driving the carriage. The lifting motor can left up to 10 tons
while the carriage driving motor moves the load with a low
constant speed across the girder span. The crane mobility
system, shown in Fig. 17, consists of steering and driving
mechanisms. Each mechanism is driven by two 0.75 Kw
electric motors with built-in reduction gear boxes. The
control unit, shown in Fig. 18, includes the crane electric
wiring collecting nodes, control switches, safety precaution
switches and emergency buttons, control pendant is
supported as well. The power unit of the crane is a generator
driven by a diesel engine that can deliver up to 7 Kw to the
electric motors of the crane trolley mechanism and mobility
system.
Considering the fact that cranes can be a very dangerous
Fig. 16. Crane trolley mechanism  piece of equipment, it is crucial to follow basic craning
hazard prevention measures that ensure the safety of all
 personnel who may be in the immediate areas where cranes
are  being operated. The load test for the crane has been
 proceeded with a calibrated load measuring device and all
dimensions and calculations have been double checked and
determined to be accurate within acceptable tolerance. Then
the load test report and load chart have been developed. The
maintenance file of the crane, which is a compilation of all
documents related to the crane inspection and repair, has
 been developed. It includes dated periodic inspection
records and other documentation to provide an evidence of
a safe and reliable maintenance program. It includes
Fig. 17. Crane mobility system
documents such as crane daily inspection checklist,
maintenance post-operative checklist and records related to
operation, maintenance, inspection, testing, evaluation, and
repair of the equipment. Maintenance file information
should provide a source for comparing present conditions
with past conditions to determine whether existing
conditions show a trending pattern of wear, deterioration, or
other comparable factors that may compromise safe or
continued use of the equipment.

CONCLUSIONS 

This
duty paper presents
gantry crane the
thatdesign
can and implementation
be used to executeof indoor
a light
materials handling operations within small workshops. The
crane design, which includes the crane chassis structure
stress analysis as well as the construction of the crane
trolley mechanism and mobility system, has been discussed.
We have also discussed the design of the crane control
circuit that includes steps such as modeling of the dynamic
crane behavior, the selection of an appropriate control
Fig. 18. Crane control unit strategy, and validation of the control circuit using a
 prototype of the gantry crane. All design reports, blueprints,

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