Simulation Analysis Of Forestry Crane And Finite Element Analysis Of Its Boom Assembly

As an important part of national economy, forestry plays an important role ineconomic development, as well as the transport work in forestry industry. With the risingcost of human resources, fewer people are willing to engage in the cutting and transportwork in the forest due to its labor-intensive and dangerous environment. Forestry cranesare invented to reduce the labor intensity, improve the production efficiency and increasethe use of mechanization in forestry industry. As a special truck-mounted crane, theforestry cranes can be widely used in the field of not only forestry but also industry sectors.They have a very broad market prospect. But because of its special structure and workingconditions, the forestry cranes are different from the general truck-mounted cranes and theresearch on them is rare.The research object of this paper is a new straight-arm forestry crane. The typicalstructures and general working principles of two widely used truck-mounted forestrycranes are introduced first, the detailed working process of the straight-arm crane isaddress. And then simulation model of the crane has been established using ADAMSsoftware. The analyses of the kinematics and dynamic behavior of the crane structure havebeen carried out using the ADAMS model. The variations of the luffing cylinder forcesduring the working process were found to be in good agreement with those from thetheoretical analysis. Optimization process of the distributions of the hinge positions of theluffing mechanism has been carried out using the parametric features of the ADAMSsoftware. The objective of the optimization is to minimize the maximum cylinder forceduring the working cycles. At last, detailed3-D solid finite element model of the boomstructure has been established using ANSYS Parametric Design Language. Numericalanalyses of the boom structure under different loading conditions have been performed.Detailed stress distribution and deformation response of the boom were obtained. Naturalfrequencies and vibration modes of the structure were derived from modal analysis.Theanalysis results correlate well with those of experiment measurements.The methodology developed in this study can be used to provide useful guidance to the design of other cranes of the same or similar types.