CP&A has completed the structural design review of a 3,500-tonne double boom offshore crane.
A mammoth hulking offshore crane with two booms each longer than a football pitch has been structurally design reviewed by Casper, Phillips & Associates (CP&A), the multi-discipline engineering firm.
The crane, which has a wide range of potential applications, from massive cargo handling to building dockside bridges to offshore wind farm or oil rig installations, has been built by China’s Dalian Huarui Heavy Industry Group (DHHI).
The crane mast reaches 40.5 metres, while the two booms sit side by side and can be used together or individually.
”These mammoth dimensions allow DHHI’s crane to handle cargo as large as 32m-high, with a 50m by 50m footprint, over water or on land,” said CP&A mechanical engineer Richard Phillips, who admitted it was a tricky project to review the machine. “The analysis was rather complex; we had to use a special pipe-to-pipe connection post-processor that we created in-house.
“Pre-processing is the creation of the mathematical model of the crane structure 9defining structural beams, developing loads and load cases). FEA processing is when you take the math model and solve it to get the forces in each structural member (beams and columns). Post-processing is when you take the forces in each structural member end and check to see if the structural members and connections have adequate strength and resilience.”
