Optimization Method of Location for Cooperative Lifting of Two Mobile Cranes

Dual-crane lifting has been generally used with the need of erection and installation of large equipment. Choosing proper locations for two mobile cranes is an important work as well as a difficulty in design of heavy lifting plan. So, this paper proposes an optimization method of location for cooperative lifting of dual-crane. This approach starts with determining search field and maximum step length, and then finds out load’s possible initial locations by bisection method; secondly calculates work envelope of dual-crane which will be dispersed to find all dual-crane’s possible locations; after this, it puts cranes in their respective possible locations corresponding to each load’s location and simulates the whole lifting course while carries out collision detection to exclude crash happened locations; finally, creates weighted optimization function, uses enumeration method to traverse all collision-free locations, and gains optimal location of dual-crane and load. At last, this approach has been used in an actual engineering case and optimal location is got, from which we can see its feasibility and validity.© 2012 ASME