International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER)

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ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2015): 3.791

Effect of Length of Boom Support Leg on Free

Standing Jib Crane
Parag Yawale¹, Prof. Nilesh Khandare²

¹ME Student SSGM College of Engineering, Shegaon, India

²Assistant Prof. SSGM College of Engineering, Shegaon, India

Abstract: Free standing jib cranes are one of the materials handling equipment used intensively. Various design standards are
available for design of jib crane, which helps designer to choose appropriate design parameters. Numbers of analysis techniques are
available for design and validation of jib crane elements. In this paper an attempt has been made to optimize the length of boom support
leg of free standing jib crane having capacity of 1Ton. With the help of FEM software i.e. ANSYS 15, by using trial and error method, it
is found that, stresses developed in crane were minimum when length of leg boom support equals to near about 1/3rd of column height.

Keywords: Jib crane, Boom support leg, ANSYS, Indian Standards, Analysis

1. Introduction 2. Problem Statement

Jib cranes are very useful for lifting and transferring heavy In this present work jib crane having capacity of 1 ton is
loads in circular work volume. Jib crane provides easy, safe analyzed to find optimum length of boom support leg.
and faster transfer of load from one place to another.
Standard jib cranes can lift much heavier loads than other In jib crane, load is transferred to column by means of boom
similar material handling equipment; with a standard support leg. Loading conditions of crane are analyzed and
capacity of 5 tons and span up to 20-feet.Jib crane provides found that the most affected area by load is contact point of
flexibility in design; therefore jib cranes are available with boom support leg and collar of column. At this point stresses
many designs as per requirement. There are various parts of will be more. And as per Indian Standards the value of
jib crane like its column or mast which supports whole crane, stresses should not go beyond the allowable stress. Therefore
cantilever beam, boom support leg nd hoist which moves on care is taken to propose a length of boom support leg by
the boom of crane. keeping all the stresses within limit.

Classification of crane has importance in design. For In present work jib crane is analyzed by numerical method
example, Sandip Shinde has suggested that, on the basis of with the help of ANSYS 15 to get optimum length of boom
classification of crane, designer has to choose number of support leg. Figure 1 shows line diagram of jib crane.
design parameters [4]. Therefore designer must be aware of
classification of crane, design standards and failure causes of
cranes.

Since many elements of jib crane are designed on the basis

of trial and error method. Therefore there is always
requirement of optimized design. Krunal Gandhare and Prof.
Vinay Thute suggested a method for optimization of boom
i.e. evolutionary algorithm [8]. Evolutionary algorithm can
solve the problems only when problem satisfies all the
required criteria of algorithm.

According to respective standards of crane, it was found that

there are numbers of constraints or limit state conditions for
design which has suggested the limits of design parameters Figure 1: Line diagram of Jib crane
like total deflection of crane, stresses, section ratio,
slenderness ratio, etc. These parameters should not go
3. Design of Jib Crane
beyond the limit stated.
In this work boom support leg used was rectangular in shape;
Indian standards used in this work for design of crane are: IS
dimensions used for analysis are shown in figure 2.
15419:2004 (Jib cranes - code of practice), material for Jib
crane was chosen from IS 2062:2011 (Hot rolled medium
and high tensile structural steel – specification). IS 800:2007
(General Construction in Steel) is used for construction of
crane, IS 3177:1999 for EOT overhead crane design and IS
807:2006 (Design, Erection and Testing, Structural Portion
of Cranes and Hoists).

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ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2015): 3.791
Crane under consideration has capacity of1 ton, whose
dimensions are shown in Table 1.The material for used for
crane is structural steel whose properties are shown in Table
2.

Table 1: Dimensions of Jib crane

Sr. No. Elements/ parts Dimensions
1. Mast height 4072 mm
2. Outer diameter of Mast 425 mm
3. Inner diameter of Mast 405mm
Figure 2: Cross sectional dimensions of boom support leg 4. Thickness of Mast 10 mm
5. Boom length 4800 mm
Image Courtesy: Shree Abhay Cranes, Shegaon (India)
Table 2: Material properties of Jib crane
In Figure 3 various elements of jib crane are shown. Sr. No. Particulars Value
1. Density 7850 kg/m3
2. Young’s modulus 200 GPa
3. Yield Strength 250 MPa
4. Max. Tensile Strength 410 MPa
5. Poissonratio 0.3

4. Indian Standards design constraints and

calculation formulae for crane

Figure 3: Dimensions between Boom and Column Indian Standards are the guidelines need to follow while
designing a structural member. Indian Standards has stated
In this section boom support leg length and weight the design constraints for jib crane. Therefore at the time of
calculations are discussed. designing, these constraints should be taken into account. In
present work these constraints are considered while analysis.
Total length of BSL is calculated as, In this section design parameters of crane and their limits are
discussed.
Distance between column Length of collar
= + 4.1 Total Deflection of Crane
end plate and boom from top of column

And distance between column end and boom for the crane According to IS 15419: 2004, design of column and boom
chosen is taken as 168mm should be such that, total deflection of crane (δmax ) should
not exceed equation (4)
Roller of boom support leg moves on collar which is
mounted on column. Hence, position of collar varies with Boom Length + Height of Column
δmax = (4)
changing length of boom support leg. 300

Weight of boom support leg influence the stresses generated

in crane. With increase in weight of boom support leg For given dimensions of crane, total deflection should be,
stresses also increases, therefore weight of boom support leg 4800 + 4072
δmax <
should be minimum as possible. Total weight of boom 300
support leg is calculated as follows: δmax < 29.57mm
4.2 Limiting Stresses
From equation of mass,
Stresses occurred in the crane should not exceed following
Mass = Density × Volume (1) limit (As per Clause 9.2[2])
Volume = Area × Length (2)
ABSL = 2 baf × t f + hw × t w (3) a) Tensile stress <σa
where, b) Compression stress <σa 1.5
c) Shear <σa 3
A BSL = Cross sectional area of the boom
support leg where,
baf , t f = Breadth and thickness of top and σa = Fundamental allowable stress
bottom cover plate respectively
hw , t w = Depth and thickness of web It is calculated as given in equation (5) or (6)
respectively
Yield Stress (5)
σa =
Calculated cross sectional area of boom support leg is, γ
ABSL = 13600 mm2 Or

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ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2015): 3.791
Tensile Stength (6)
σa =
γ

γis factor of safety whose value depends upon loading

conditions and combination of loads acting on crane. Value
of γ is chosen as 1.5 from Clause 9 [2].

4.3 Total Design Load

Design load is always greater than applied load because of

safety factor. An assumption is made that crane under
consideration is working without wind effect, therefore total
weight applied is calculated by equation (7)(As per IS
807:2006)

W = SL + WL × ψ (7)

where, Figure 4: Boom support leg having 800 mm length

W = Total design load
SL = Static load due to dead weight of boom
WL = Working Load
ψ = Dynamic Coefficient or Impact Factor

The dynamic coefficient depends upon the classification of

the crane. Here the crane identified is from group M6 with
class of utilization “C” i.e. regular use on intensive duty with
moderate state of loading/stress [2].The Dynamic coefficient
or Impact factor is selected as 1.4.

Here design load taken as 22339.21 N

5. Optimization of boom support leg Length

Optimization is the method of selecting best feasible solution
from available. In other word optimization means
maximization or minimization of one or more functions with Figure 5: Boom support leg having 1650 mm length
given constraints. Three techniques are available for
optimization of jib crane elements: classical approach,
automated computing technique and trial and error method.
In this work, trial and error method is used to get optimum
length of boom support leg, so that evaluated length of boom
support leg gives optimum lesser value of stresses.

The procedure followed for trial and error method is

discussed below:

In this method, first a CAD model of complete jib crane is

built-in ANSYS 15, as per given dimensions of crane. Then
boundary conditions are applied. Mesh is generated for
whole crane which is shown in Figure 6, the numbers of
nodes generated for the crane which has 1518mm boom
support leg length were 24586 and numbers of elements
generated were 10812. Then results obtained from ANSYS
15 for deflection and various stresses are analyzed.
Figure 6: Meshing of crane having boom support leg length
Same procedure is followed for numbers of trials of boom of 1518 mm
support leg length. Two trial samples are shown in Figure 4
and Figure 5. 6. Results and Discussion
The results obtained from trial and error method are
compared and results are plotted. By using trial and error
method with the help of ANSYS 15, it is found that 1518
mm length of boom support leg is optimum length. At this

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 International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER)
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ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2015): 3.791
length value of maximum principal stress is optimum. Figure
7 and Figure 8 shows values of maximum principal stress
and deflection obtained at 1518 mm of boom support leg
length respectively.

Figure 9:Effect of boom support leg length on deflection

Figure 7: Max. Principal Stress inJib crane

Figure 9 shows that as the length of boom support leg

increases the values of total crane deflection decreases. As
the length of boom support leg increases, its weight also
increases.

Figure 10:Effect of boom support leg length on max.

principal stress

The effect of length of leg boom support leg on developed

principal stress in crane is shown in Figure 10.

At1518mm length of boom support leg, value of

max.principal stress is minimum which is 93.877 MPa and
deflection of crane obtained is16.149mm. These values are
under limitsspecified by Indian Standards.

From column height and boom support leg length following

Figure 8: Deflection of Jib crane relation is generated

Height of column 4072

= ≈ 2.7
Length of BLS 1518

The value 1518 mm is near about 1/3rd of column height.

Hence, it can be concluded that the length of boom support
leg from top of columnshould be 1/3rdof column height for
given dimension ofjib crane.

7. Conclusion
In this work an attempt is made to get optimum length of
boom support leg with the help of trial and error method by
usig ANSYS 15. And found that 1518mm is the optimum
lengthof boom support leg.Though trial and error method is
time consuming, ithas given satisfactory and reliable results.

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 International Journal of Scientific Engineering and Research (IJSER)
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ISSN (Online): 2347-3878, Impact Factor (2015): 3.791
References
[1] Indian Standard 15419:2004, Jib cranes- Code of
Practice.
[2] Indian Standard 807:2006, Design, Erection and Testing
(Structural Portion) of Cranes and Hoists- Code of
Practice.
[3] Indian Standard 800:2007, General Construction In
steel- Code of Practice.
[4] Sandip D. Shinde, “Standardization of Jib crane Design
by “F.E.M. Rules” And Parametric Modeling”,
International Journal of Recent Trends in Engineering,
Volume 1, No. 5, May 2009.
[5] Indian Standard 2062:2011, Hot rolled medium and high
tensile structural steel – specification.
[6] Francesco Frendo, “Analysis of the catastrophic failure
of a dockside crane jib”, Engineering Failure Analysis
31 (2013) 394-411.
[7] A. A. Marquez, P. Venturino, J.L. Otegui, “Common
root causes in recent failures of cranes”, Engineering
Failure Analysis 39 (2014)55-64.
[8] Krunal Gandhare, Prof. Vinay Thute, “Design
Optimization of Jib crane Boom Using Evolutionary
Algorithm”, International Journal of Scientific
Engineering and Research, ISSN (Online): 2347-3878,
Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2015

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