Crane Beam in Steel Structure Building

Crane Beam Design and Classifications in Steel Structure Building

1.1 Crane Beam Components

Crane beam is a kind of beam structure supporting the crane working, it plays an important role in meeting the production requirements of industrial construction buildings, which is also a popular structure in industrial workshops.

Crane beam system includes crane beam or crane truss, brake structure, lateral and vertical support. However, brake structure can be removed if the crane beam span and the crane bearing load are all small.

1.2 Crane Beam Classifications

Generally, a crane beam (solid belly) and a crane truss (empty belly) are distinguished by a solid body and an empty body, such as crane beam with steel beam, steel beam combination work-shaped beam, box beam, wall type crane beam and other forms. The most popular crane beam is welding I beam and H-shaped steel crane beam.

(1) Steel Crane Beam

The type steel crane beam is directly made of hot-rolled H-type steel, which is easy to make, but the steel consumption is slightly higher. Generally, it is suitable for the situation where the beam span is less than 9m and the lifting capacity of the crane is less than 20t.

(2) Welded H section Steel Crane Beam

Welded H section steel beam has good bearing performance, reliable work, simple construction, and easy to optimize the beam section, which is the most commonly used type selection.

(3) Crane Truss

Using section steel or combined I-shaped beam as a truss with a stiff upper chord, it saves (about 15%~20%) compared with solid web beam steel, but it is more labor-intensive to manufacture, and the node connection is sensitive to fatigue. It is suitable for the situation where the span L≥18m and the lifting capacity Q≤30t of light and medium cranes. There is a precedent for the application of 36m-span bolt-welded crane trusses in China (for intermediate cranes with a lifting capacity of Q=75t).

(4) Box Beam as Crane Beam

Box crane girder has the advantages of large stiffness and good deflection resistance, which is suitable for large span, large tonnage soft hook crane or A8 working class hard hook crane, as well as the crane girder with high counter torsion stiffness requirements (such as large span wall running crane girder) crane girder. However, the production is more complicated, the welding operation conditions are poor, and the welding deformation is not easy to control and correct.

(5) Wall Line Crane Beam

The wall crane beam is composed of the upper beam bearing the horizontal load and the lower beam bearing both the horizontal and vertical load. The separation type is more economical, but the relative deformation of the upper and lower beams must be strictly controlled. In order to increase the stiffness of the crane structure, the upper and lower beams can also be combined into the box type section.

(6) Suspended Crane Beam

Suspended crane beams are usually suspended on the nodes or independent pillars and supports of roof load-bearing structures (roof trusses, grid frames, portal rigid frames, etc.) by using hot-rolled H section steel. It can be used as both the crane beam of the suspended single-girder crane and the track beam of the monorail crane. Generally used for cranes with a lifting capacity of 0.25~10t.