Wind loading of shipyard gantry cranes — full-scale measurements

Abstract Shipyard gantry cranes are nowadays built up to about 100 m hook height and 200 m span. Wind loading is becoming a major factor in design. Therefore, detailed and modern approaches to wind loading are required. They have to be verified by full-scale measurements. In this paper, a full-scale instrumentation as well as some results are described. A comparison with results of a boundary-layer wind-tunnel test is given. For the general dynamic behaviour of the crane, good correspondence between wind-tunnel and full-scale results can be observed. The measurements are still in progress.