Comparison of finite element analysis with wind tunnel test on stability of a container crane

This study is conducted to provide the proper analysis method to evaluate the stability of a container crane under wind load. Two analysis method, namely structure analysis and fluid-structure interaction, are adopted to evaluate the stability of a container crane in this investigation. To evaluate the effect of wind load on the stability of the crane, 50-ton class container crane widely used in container terminals is adopted for analysis model and 19-values are considered for wind direction as design parameter. We conduct structure analysis and fluid-structure interaction for a container crane with respect to the wind direction using ANSYS and CFX. Then we compare the uplift forces yielded from two analysis with it yielded from wind tunnel test. The results are as follows: 1) A correlation coefficient between structure analysis and wind tunnel test is lower than 0.65(as ), but between fluid-structure interaction and wind tunnel test is higher than 0.65(as ). 2) There is low correlation between structure analysis and wind tunnel test but very high correlation between fluid-structure interaction and wind tunnel test.