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As a material handler, the crane plays a vital role within the operations of the manufacturing, construction, and shipping industries. Objects of all shapes and sizes are conveyed with the crane to improve productivity and reduce worker fatigue. The crane's capacity to operate efficiently and safely however, suffers from payload pendulations. This cyclic motion of crane cable and payload produces schedule delays, property damage, and high risk to personnel. Current pendulation reduction systems have typically been applied to overhead cranes within the manufacturing and shipping industries. The construction industry in contrast, has failed to innovate tower and mobile cranes. This can be traced to the complexity of the construction operation and the conditions under which the construction crane performs. This thesis aims to improve productivity and safety within the construction industry through the application of damping systems on construction cranes. To achieve this goaL an experimental model will be developed and tested. The design process will include an analysis of operational constraints, theoretical design, and physical testing. Tuned mass damping will be investigated as the basis for the damping control method. Theory will be detailed and incorporated in a mathematical simulation. The tuned mass damper, a cantilevered rod, will be designed and tested for application. The system will then be coupled to a scaled crane model for testing. Data analysis will be used to define the models effectiveness. From the theoretical analysis and physical testing, a conceptual model will be defined. Subjects for future research will also be presented. / Master of Science

Cranes are used to lift and move large objects in a wide variety of applications at constructions sites, shipping ports, and manufacturing facilities, etc. If the load to be moved is too long or heavy for a single crane, then two, or more, cranes must work in cooperation to move the payload. In a factory setting this can be accomplished using two trolleys running along the same bridge forming a dual hoist crane. Using two hoists not only increases lifting capacity, it also improves stability of the payload over traditional single hoist configurations. This research takes advantage of that increased stability and explores a novel application for dual hoist cranes: suspending a robot arm from the two trolleys. This increases the workspace of the robot to the entirety of the space covered by the crane, opening up numerous applications not possible with a stationary robot. In order to better understand and characterize the dynamics of the system, a numerical model was developed and tested against a physical system to confirm its validity. A vision system has the potential to greatly increase the usefulness of a robotic system such as the one presented in previous paragraph. The Asus Xtion was used in this work due to its versatility and low cost. An evaluation of this sensor was performed. Various tests were conducted to determine its accuracy in a range of scenarios. It was found that crane oscillations degraded the quality of data returned. This is effect is especially detrimental if the crane is moved to a specified point and sensing begins immediately. The data collection process could be delayed until the residual oscillations subside, however the time penalty incurred by waiting is large because the oscillations are lightly damped and have a long period. To address this issue a control method called input shaping was introduced to reduce the residual oscillations thereby increasing the quality of the sensor data. Finally, two promising uses of the robot arm dual-hoist crane system were introduced: painting and sandblasting. The efficiency of a factory equipped with this system can be increased at relatively low cost by automating manual tasks such as these.

Hoists and cranes exist in many contexts around the world, often carrying veryheavy loads. The safety for the user and bystanders is of utmost importance. Thisthesis investigates whether it is possible to perform fault detection on a systemlevel, measuring the inputs and outputs of the system without introducing newsensors. The possibility of detecting dangerous faults while letting safe faultspass is also examined.A mathematical greybox model is developed and the unknown parametersare estimated using data from a labscale test crane. Validation is then performedwith other datasets to check the accuracy of the model. A linear observer of thesystem states is created using the model. Simulated fault injections are made,and different fault detection methods are applied to the residuals created withthe observer. The results show that dangerous faults in the system or the sensorsthemselves are detectable, while safe faults are disregarded in many cases.The idea of performing model-based fault detection from a system point ofview shows potential, and continued investigation is recommended.

The work environment of a mobile crane is hazardous where accidents can cause serious injuries or death for workers and non-workers. Therefore, the risk for these accidents should be avoided when possible. One way to avoid the potential accidents is to use mobile crane simulations instead, which removes the risk. Because of this, simulations have been developed to train operators and plan future operations. Mobile crane simulations can also be used to perform research related to mobile cranes, but for the result to be applicable to real-world settings the simulation has to be realistic enough. Therefore, this thesis evaluated an aspect of realism which is the lifting capacity of a mobile crane. This was done by having an artificial neural network train on values from load charts of a real crane, that was then used to predict the lifting capacities based on the boom length and the load radius of the virtual crane. An experiment was conducted in the simulation that collected the predicted lifting capacities which was then compared to the lifting capacities in the load charts of a real crane. The results showed that the lifting capacities could be predicted with little to no deviation except for in a few cases. When conducting the experiment, it was found that the virtual mobile crane could not reach all load radiuses documented in the real load charts. The predicted lifting capacities are concluded to be realistic enough for crane-related research, but should be refined if the lifting capacity plays a key role in the research. Future works such as improving and generalizing the artificial network, and performing the evaluation with user tests are prompted.

The diploma thesis deals with a design of a rotating part of a crane trolley of a scrap crane with a load capacity of 110,000 kg, which is situated in an exterior environment. The aim of the diploma thesis is a design and calculation verified design of the lifting mechanism, rotation mechanism and the design of a spacious traverse, which is used for the manipulation of the scrap trough and casting ladle.

This diploma thesis handles with a draft and conception of the warehouse hall and crane track where the main goal is the creation of outside and inside storage space which is covered by the trolley crane. Next point is about construction and stress calculation of the crane track and logistic ordering of the outside space with option of loading on wheel and rail transport.

This thesis describes the design of a laboratory model of the bridge crane, which will be further used for Internal Combustion Engines to identify the forces in and verificationof control algorithms, automated crane. The aim of this thesis is to design a bridge and a cat laboratory bridge crane with a carrying capacity of 10 kg and work area 2 m x 2 m x 3 m crane mostly of lightweight aluminum profiles. Furthermore, it includes variousdrives and drive for the lifting mechanism.