Selected aspects of calculating crane supporting beams

During the last few years the European Standards (EN) for designing the overhead crane beams has been introduced by many countries. The general design approach and detailed guidelines presented in these documents are partly different from the previous obligatory national design rules. The calculation based on new rules mostly reveals greater use of the terms of the load capacity, especially it concerns the fatigue load capacity. Such a results lead to designing of the oversized cross-section. On the other hand the investors’ requirements to extremely reduce the weight of the construction is a big challenge to the structural engineers and that enforced them to design the constructions without any reserve of the load capacity. In such a context the legitimacy of the simplified calculation method that has been used so far is discussed in this paper. For this purpose the exemplary calculations of beams with varied cross-sections by use of the precise and simplified method were executed. The conclusions concerning differences in stresses values resulting from acceptance of simplified model have been shown. The issues connected with the assessment of the fatigue load capacity are mentioned also in this paper especially focusing on the load capacity of the elements with holes. The American and European standards and another guidelines have been analysed in the aforementioned context and compared with accessible test results.

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