Large Scale Shake Table Test of a Port Container Crane under Strong Motion Excitation

摘要

Earthquakes pose a significant threat to seaports in the United States and around the World. Container cranes, used to load and unload goods, represent one of the most vulnerable components of ports. Cranes are critical to the economy and post disaster response of a region. In order to better understand how cranes behave under earthquake loading, shake table experiments are conducted on a 1:10 scale model of a typical container crane found on the west coast of the USA. During previous earthquakes, three failure modes have been observed: derailment, local buckling of the legs and collapse. To investigate the various failure modes, a 1:10 scale model is constructed and tested on the six-degree-of-freedom shake table at the University at Buffalo. For ease of testing, the model is simplified by modifying the boom structure, while still preserving the most influential vibration modes. This paper presents important results from the study.