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CRANESInspect – health monitoring for crane inspection

TWI has recently completed a two-year collaborative project, funded by the EC, to develop an advanced integrated Structural Health Monitoring system that offers continuous monitoring of cranes in industrial, logistics, construction, and shipbuilding sites.

Cranes are one of the most common types of machinery used in industry, installed to manipulate loads in locations including industrial plants, construction sites, shipyards and ports. There were 401 crane accidents reported in 2008, of which 217 were fatal, and crane operators work with a 1-in-1000 risk of being fatally injured. This clearly demonstrates a vital need for systems to continuously monitor the structural health of cranes.

CRANESInspect had the following objectives:

  • evaluate the complexity of a multi-disciplinary industrial problem
  • gather signatures and environmental effects
  • evaluate a process that detects damage (fatigue cracks) before it becomes critical
  • monitor the damage/crack
  • increase confidence in the monitoring process (feedback warnings).

The CRANESInspect monitoring and prevention system features important advantages, including: 

  • real-time monitoring of the structure to ensure safety
  • cost-effective and total solutions for inspection/maintenance
  • reduction of human intervention and operator subjectivity
  • highly sensitive and accurate acoustic emission technology
  • low-cost and reliable structural health monitoring system for cranes
  • dramatically reduced costs for inspections and insurance during the crane’s lifetime
  • prevention of extra costs derived from the structural failure of a crane (downtime and compensation costs). 
Modelling results – reinforcing plates
Modelling results – reinforcing plates

Programme of work

In the initial stages of the project, tests were performed on a crane, in collaboration with the project’s end user Cargotec. The crane’s critical areas were identified. Its reinforcing plates were shown to be submitted to the highest equivalent level of stress compared to the crane’s other components, so much of the effort was directed into covering this area.

The project consortium developed a dual-capability transmission-reception algorithm using acoustic emission (AE) and guided wave testing (GWT) techniques. These techniques were utilised to monitor, localise and focus on defects. Acoustic emission, as a passive method, was utilised for defect detection and localisation. Once a defect was detected, GWT was used to assess its size. As part of the project, control software for acquisition and processing was developed to analyse the monitoring data collected. 

The complete prototype system was assessed both in the laboratory/factory and in the field as part of the capability validation process of the developed system. Several AE signals were simulated in different locations and the source was localised with a minimum error.

Finally, as part of the validation process, experiments were performed on an in-service crane in Rotterdam. No defects were detected during this stage.

Find out more

Additional information can be found on the project website at www.cranesinspect.eu or for more information, please email contactus@twi.co.uk.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under Grant agreement number 28456.

Prototype system developed during the project
Prototype system developed during the project
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