Multi-Objective Shape Design of Crane-Hook Taking Account of Practical Requirement

T. Muromakia, *, K. Hanaharaa, T. Nishimuraa, Y. Tadaa, S. Kurodab and T. Fukuib

a

Graduate School of Engineering, Kobe University Kobe, Japan, 657-8501 muromaki@opt.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp (*muromaki@opt.cs.kobe-u.ac.jp) b Martec K.K. Kobe, Japan, 650-0046 fukui@martec.co.jp

Abstract The main topic of this study is a shape design of a crane-hook. In order to improve the performance

of the crane-hook, we formulate a multi-objective optimization problem based on a FEM analysis. The displacement at the usual force applied point, the ratio between the total displacement against various load conditions and an H 2 -norm of the dynamic behavior are adopted as the objective functions to be minimized. The crane-hook dealt with in this study has a typical cross-section of so-called T-shape. The cross-section and the contour shape are adopted as the design variables. Continuous change of these design variables is expressed in terms of orthogonal polynomials and the Fourier series. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is used as the optimization procedure. The obtained crane-hook design has a typical tapered shape similar to those of existing designs. The result shows the basic applicability of the proposed objective functions as well as the optimal design approach.
Keywords: Crane-hook, Practical Condition, Particle Swarm Optimization, Shape optimization, Norm.

INTRODUCTION
An excavator is one of the fundamental machines used for construction work. Recently, excavators having a crane-hook are widely used for various suspension tasks because of the convenience. For example, removing of boards to prevent dug soil from collapsing is often performed by suspending the boards with the crane-hook of an excavator. Improvement of the performance of the crane-hook is important from the viewpoint of safety; the real conditions of such suspension tasks in practical environment are, however, still unclear. In order to achieve the improvement of its performance, it is necessary to consider the formulation of evaluating items: not only the strength to a specified applied force, but also a safety consideration on unspecified factor. In this study, we conduct a multiobjective optimal design approach to this problem. We deal with both static and dynamic criteria to be optimized. We adopt two static criteria; in addition to the conventional criterion of displacement against a specified load, a displacement norm against all possible loads is also introduced. There are researches on structural optimization concerning eigenfrequency of the structures; for example, a frequency optimization approach[1] is one of such examples. In the current study, we pay attention to the vibration suppression point of view of the structure. We employ the H 2 -norm of the structure as the dynamic criterion[2]; that is, the criterion evaluates the time response of the crane-hook against an impulse force.

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CRANE-HOOK MODEL
1. Design Model Figures 1 (a) and (b) show the crane-hook shape and its design model dealt with in this study. It has the typical cross-section of so-called T-shape, having parameters b1 , b2 , h1 and h2 . The contour A-B is expressed in terms of an arbitrary function, the contour A-C is a circular arc and the contour C-D is a straight line.
B

100
A
(0,0)
7 6

b1

b2 44
h1
h2

(a) Crane-hook

(b) Crane-hook model 2. Dynamic Model

FIGURE 1. Crane-Hook and its model with T-like shape cross section

On the basis of the Lagrangian approach[3], we formulate the equation of motion of the crane-hook. In the current study, the two-dimensional beam element representation is adopted; the discretized equation of motion of the crane-hook based on the finite element model is developed in the following general form as

 + K d F = 0 , Md

(1)

where d denotes the elastic deformation vector; this vector consists of the axial direction displacement, the nodal displacement and the deflection angle of the beam elements. The symbols M , K and F are the mass matrix, the stiffness matrix and the external force and moment vector. We assume that this dynamic system has a structural damping characteristic. The dynamic equation with the damping feature is rewritten in the general form as

 + D d  + K d = F , Md

(2)

where D is the damping matrix. In this study, we adopt the Rayleigh damping for the damping characteristic. Matrix D is expressed in terms of mass matrix M and stiffness matrix K as follows: D = M + K , (3) where

and

are coefficients. These coefficients are determined in an experimental manner.

We introduce the state equation description of the equation of motion (2). Using the state variables vector

x = dT

T d

, Eq. (2) can be rewritten in the following form:

 = A x + Bu , x 0 A= 1 M K

y =Cx I
1

(4) 0 , B = 1 , u = LF (I + M K ) M where C is the observation output matrix and L represents the coefficients of the input vector. By means of the Laplace transform, we obtain the transfer function matrix H which is associated with the system input u and output x . Matrix H is expressed as follows: H ( s ) := C ( sI A) 1 B (5)

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OPTIMAL DESIGN PROBLEM

1. Design Variables and Parametric Representation The parameters of the T-shape cross-section of the beam elements, b1 , b2 , h1 and h2 are adopted as the design

variables; that is, the number of the corresponding design variables is 4 N , where N is the number of beam elements. In order to reduce the degrees of freedom of the design variables, we use a polynomial function representation of each of the cross-section shape parameters. The design variable h1 is represented as

h1 ( L ) = ih1 Ti
i =0

NC

(0 1) ,

(6)

where L ,

, NC

and

ih

are the total length of the crane-hook, the local coordinate along the dashed line in

Figure 1(b), the degree of the polynomial and the coefficient parameters. We adopt the Chebyshev polynomial Ti represented as follows:

Tn + 2 ( ) = 2 Tn +1 ( ) Tn ( ), T0 ( ) = 1, T1 ( ) = (7) Parameters b1 , b2 and h2 are defined in the same manner. We utilize the Fourier series for the representation of
q (l AB ) = (a l AB + b ) + iq sin
i =0 Ns

the contour A-B in addition to the polynomial functions used in the above cross-section design. The shape of the contour A-B is expressed as

(0 1) ,

(8)

where a , b , l AB , N S and

iq

are the two coefficients for the first term of Eq.(8), the length of the contour A-

B, the degree of Fourier series and the coefficient parameters for the shape of contour A-B. The coefficients a and

b are determined so that linear part of Eq.(8) represents the straight line between the point A and B.
2. Formulation of Criteria and Optimization Problem We use the following criteria for the crane-hook design: (i) the displacement at the force-applied point, (ii) the ratio between a displacement norm and possible load and (iii) the H 2 -norm of the structural dynamic response. Criterion (i) is obtained as

J 1 = || BW K 1 F ||
where

(9)

BW is the Boolean matrix corresponding to the force-applied point. Criterion (ii) is formulated as
|| d || || K 1 F || J 2 = max = max F 0 || F || F 0 || F ||
(10)

Because of the maximum principle on the eigenvalue, this can be calculated as

J 2 = || K 1 || 2 .
This equation evaluates the induced 2-norm based on the inner product; accordingly, we can calculate the maximum ratio between the norm of displacement vector d and that of various load vector F . Criterion (iii) is expressed as

J 3 = || H || 2 =

1 2

Trace H ( j ) * H ( j ) d

(11)

This is to evaluate the response of the system against various given impulse. The multi-objective optimal design problem of the crane-hook is then expressed as follows:

634


where

Minimize

h1 h2 with respect to ," , N , 1h2 , " , N ," C C such that |||| a , V = Vref h1 1

J1 , J 2 , J 3

(12)

is the stress vector,

is the allowable stress, and Vref is the reference volume. In order to find the

Pareto optimal solutions for this multi-objective problem, an integrated evaluation function is introduced by means of the weighting factors, as

F = 1

J J1 J +2 2 +3 3 J1 J2 J3

1 + 2 + 3 = 1

(13) and

where J 1 , J 2 and J 3 are the values corresponding to a reference design, and

1 , 2

are the weighting

factors. We evaluate the performance of designs under the various combinations of weight factors.

OPTIMIZATION METHOD
In order to solve the optimization problem, we utilize the Particle swarm optimization. It is a population-based evolutionary algorithm [4]. Individuals of a swarm communicate information of good positions with each other and adjust their own position and velocity based on the obtained information. In our optimal design problem, good position means a design variable vector with smaller objective function value. A particle has the following information in addition to its position and velocity: (i) the global best p g at the k -th step is known to all particles in the swarm; (ii) each particle has the local best p i which is the best previous position of particle i at step k . The position of each particle represents the design variables vector . For particle i , the position d i and velocity vi are updated in the following manner:
k k

i( k +1) = i( k ) + vi( k +1)

(k ) vi( k +1) = w ( k ) vi( k ) + c1 r1 ( pi( k ) i( k ) ) + c 2 r2 ( p g i( k ) )

(14)

(k )

= wmax ( wmax wmin )

k k max

where r1 and r2 represent uniform random numbers between 0 and 1, superscript k is the search step, k max is the maximum search iteration number, and w, c1 and c 2 are the weight parameters on updating of vi . Matsui et al. [5] proposed the modification of the updating step of the velocity. In their algorithm, the velocity at the next search step is updated according to the condition of the current search process. In this study, the approach is applied as follows: If the best search point of an individual is renewed at the previous search step, the velocity at the next search step is renewed as
k vi( k +1) = c1 r1 ( pik i( k ) ) + c 2 r2 ( p g i( k ) ) .

(15)

If the best search point of an individual is renewed at the current search step, the velocity at the next search step is renewed as

vi( k +1) = w ( k ) vi( k ) .

In other cases, the velocity is updated by the conventional approach.

(16)

CALUCLATION RESULTS
Table 1 shows the specification of the crane-hook to be designed and the parameters of Particle swarm optimization. Table 2 shows the evaluation item values obtained by the optimization. The reference shape has the uniform rectangular cross section with the same volume Vref and its shape of the contour A-B is the straight line without Fourier series in Eq.(8). Case I is the design that attaches importance to the H 2 -norm. Both cases II and III

635

are the designs that attach importance to the displacement norm; the difference is that case II includes the Fourier series as the design variables in Eq. (8), but case III does not. Figure 2(a) shows the uniform reference design; Figures 2(b)-I, 2(b)-II and 2(b)-III show the obtained design for case I, II and III, respectively. The outline of the obtained crane-hook designs is tapered shape. The followings are features observed on Figure 2(b)-I: z The inner height from the baseline is considerably larger than the outer height especially at the right part of the loading point. z Because of the shape, the space around the loading point is narrow; it can be said that the hook is not suitable to suspending tasks. The obtained designs for cases II and III look similar based on the Figure 2(b)-II and III; the observed features of these designs are as follows: z The inner and outer heights from the baseline look balanced. z The space around the loading point is broader than that of case I. z The taper at the tip of the hook is more significant than that of case I; the resultant outline exhibits relatively flat shape at the right part of the load point. The optimality of the obtained designs can be confirmed with the objective function values in Table 2, comparing the values for case I-III with the values of the reference design. The influence of the weight factors can also be confirmed based on the values of case I and cases II and III. The difference between the values of cases II and III is small; that is, the influence of nonlinear terms for contour A-B is not significant for the current optimal designs. It is noted that, however, these results are obtained based on the two-dimensional beam element model of the crane-hook.
TABLE 1. Design specification Youngs modulus Density Reference volume

200 [GPa] 7000 [kg/ m3] 1.4 10

5

Vref
N

[m3]

Number of beam elements Applied force

34

P Nc NS

Number of Chebyshev polynomial Number of Fourier series

60 [kN] 4 3

Damping matrix coefficients Number of individuals (PSO) Number of iteration step (PSO) Parameters (PSO)

= 0.01, = 0.003
150 150

c1 = 1.5, c 2 = 1.5, wmax = 0.8, wmin = 0.2

Weight factor

1
Reference Design Case I Case II Case III 0.2 0.2 0.2

2
0.2 0.6 0.6

TABLE 2. Parameters and obtained criteria Evaluation item values Fourier term J J
3

J3

1.0 10 3 4.3 10 4 3.2 10 4 3.3 10 4

4.0 10 4 1.40 10 4 1.21 10 4 1.24 10 4

2.4 10 5 7.6 10 6 8.2 10 6 8.4 10 6

0.6 0.2 0.2

CONCLUSIONS
We deal with the shape design of the crane-hook. In order to evaluate the various conditions, we formulate the multi-objective optimization problem. Not only the displacement at the applied load point, but also the ratio between the displacement norm and possible load, and the dynamic response against various given impulse are adopted as the objective functions. The obtained crane-hook designs have a typical tapered shape similar to those of existing designs. On the basis of the obtained results based on the two-dimensional model, we find the tendency of the optimal shape that each element becomes thick in the direction of height. This is considered to be because of the lack

636

of such as twisting influence on the beam elements. Optimal designs based on a three-dimensional model are left as the future work.
0.1 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0 -0.02 -0.04 -0.06 -0.08 -0.1 -0.1 -0.08 -0.06 -0.04 -0.02 0 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.1

(a) Reference design

(b)-I Obtained design : Case I

(b)-II Obtained design : Case II (b)-III Obtained design : Case III FIGURE 2. Crane-hook designs

REFERENCES
1. YM Xie, GP Steven. Evolutionary structural optimization for dynamic problems. Computers & Structures, 1996; 58, 6: 10671073 2. L Zuo, SA Nayfeh. Suppression of single-mode vibration under random and harmonic excitation. Journal of Vibration and Acoustics, 2006; 128: 56-65 3. HH Lee. New dynamic modeling of flexible-link robots. Journal of Dynamic System, Measurement, and Control, 2005; 127: 307-309 4. PC Fourie, AA Groenwold. The particle swarm optimization algorithm in size and shape optimization. Struct. Multidisc. Optim., 2002; 23: 259-267. 5. T Matsui et al. Maximization of jump height of a serial link robot based on particle swarm optimization. Journal of the Robotics Society of Japan, 2008; 26, 1: 41-48 (in Japanese).

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