Performing optimization of structures is always of great interest. There are several different ways to optimize steel structures. Today, several companies are having difficulties with their cable drums during transport. Cable drums with full cable load become heavy and make it difficult to transport. This paper aims to examine existing published research and approaches, with a focus on steel optimization. This paper has two research objectives, the first one is to examine the possibilities for optimizing cable drums in terms of mass without compromising load capacity or yield stress. The second question is to determine how much of the weight/mass of cable drums may be reduced via optimization. To optimize it, measurements, cable drum modeling, research studies, and connecting suitable software's will be carried out in this paper. Participation Action Research and Reverse Engineering methodologies were implemented in combination. A literature review was performed to get a deeper understanding of the methods. A systematic literature review was done to identify available approaches and techniques for structural steel optimization. In order to optimize the cable drum, Excel and Autodesk Inventor were connected through Visual Basic Applications (VBA). The optimization process workflow acted with a server and two clients, where Excel acted as the server and Autodesk Inventor and MATLAB acted as clients. It was found that this was a suitable method for optimizing the cable drum were to work with an optimization process that included connecting a server with clients. The MATLAB function fmincon was applied with both interior-point algorithm and Sequential Quadratic Programming (SQP). The optimal design variables for the cable drum were established, and the objective minimization was accomplished by reducing the cable drum mass of 2495.20 kg. The cable drums mass was minimized to 101.86 kg. The literature review was systematically conducted to find available approaches and methods for structural steel optimization. The combination of Participatory Action Research (PAR) and Reverse Engineering (RE) was ideal for this project since it enabled both approaches to gather data on cable drum capacity and alternative optimization strategies.The schematic optimization workflow was appropriate to apply throughout the implementation phase. The workflow gave the user complete control over the optimization process, and the automated process saved time and was simple to adapt.

Most engineering systems are highly nonlinear in nature and thus one could not develop efficient mathematical models for these systems. Artificial neural networks, which are used in estimation, filtering, identification and control in technical literature, are considered as universal modeling and functional approximation tools. Unfortunately, developing a well trained monolithic type neural network (with many free parameters/weights) is known to be a daunting task since the process of loading a specific pattern (functional relationship) onto a generic neural network is proven to be a NP-complete problem. It implies that if training is conducted on a deterministic computer, the time required for training process grows exponentially with increasing size of the free parameter space (and the training data in correlation). As an alternative modeling technique for nonlinear dynamic systems / this thesis proposed a general methodology for structured neural network topologies and their corresponding applications are realized. The main idea behind this (rather classic) divide-and-conquer approach is to employ a priori information on the process to divide the problem into its fundamental components. Hence, a number of smaller neural networks could be designed to tackle with these elementary mapping problems. Then, all these networks are combined to yield a tailored structured neural network for the purpose of modeling the dynamic system under study accurately. Finally, implementations of the devised networks are taken into consideration and the efficiency of the proposed methodology is tested on four different types of mechanical systems.

The aim of this thesis is an analysis of the construction of a cable trailer VARIANT 200. For the calculation of load states was used a multi body system in program MSC.ADAMS. The results from these calculations were used as lifting conditions for strength control with finite element method (FEM). All acquired results were analysed and according to them changes were made to the frame construction. Part of this thesis contains drawings documenting the above mentioned changes.

This thesis deals with design four-wheel crab of crane for overhead crane with capacity of 32,000 kg. Contains the functional calculations of steel rope , pulleys, cable drum. The integral part of the thesis constitutes the calculation and choice of driving mechanism for lifting, travel drive and motor drive pulley block hook rotation.