Strength Calculation and Optimization of Boat Crane

By inspecting the existing constructional designs of boat cranes and the requirements which need to be fulfilled, the new constructional design of the boat crane is made. After determining the critical position of the crane in the form of a load, calculation of the inside diameters of cylinders is made and optimized depending on the maximum axial force. Numeric calculation of the stresses and total deformations in software ANSYS Workbench has proved that the design of crane has met all the requirements imposed on the strength. After designing the boat crane and preforming the strength calculations, it is necessary to analyze the motion of the designed crane construction. Boat crane is designed with hydraulic cylinders and rotation around the shaft using a hydraulic motor. Therefore, it is necessary to create a scheme of a hydraulic system of the crane. During the designing and strength analysis, no material exploitation was taken into account and reinforcements were added only to reduce the equivalent stresses and the maximum total deformation of the crane. Due to the possible oversizing of the reinforcements, the optimization was performed by the response surface optimization method. Optimization was performed to minimize the mass and it has been found that the construction was oversized and the mass was reduced by almost 14 kg.