Capacity enhancement of crane installed on vessel (ship)
Crane is an important material handling equipment required to handle cargo on ship. It is supposed to operate at Safe Working Load and is certified by class approval agency by testing it for 25% more load than rated load.
While doing any capacity enhancement of old equipment, it is required to ensure the strength and condition of existing structural members. Modern techniques like Ultrasonic measurements are used to measure thicknesses of existing members. The vessel is always on the move hence downtime for such activities is not acceptable by customers to avoid financial losses.
Even the retrofitting of structure needs to be done while ship is sailing to avoid downtime at port because ships are permitted to birth at port for a very short defined timelines.
Expectation of client in this case was to design capacity enhancement in such a way that it should not affect strength of existing structure and there should not be any downtime during this process.
In this case study, you will find challenges faced by engineers at Wakidok®, Engineering solution proposed to the client and benefits client received due to retrofit solution.