Nonlinear interactions in deformable container cranes

Nonlinear dynamic interactions in harbour quayside cranes due to a two-to-one internal resonance between the lowest bending mode of the deformable boom and the in-plane pendular mode of the container are investigated. To this end, a three-dimensional model of container cranes accounting for the elastic interaction between the crane boom and the container dynamics is proposed. The container is modelled as a three-dimensional rigid body elastically suspended through hoisting cables from the trolley moving along the crane boom modelled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam. The reduced governing equations of motion are obtained through the Euler-Lagrange equations employing the boom kinetic and stored energies, derived via a Galerkin discretisation based on the mode shapes of the two-span crane boom used as trial functions, and the kinetic and stored energies of the rigid body container and the elastic hoisting cables. First, conditions for the onset of internal resonances between the boom and the container are found. A higher order perturbation treatment of the Taylor expanded equations of motion in the neighbourhood of a two-to-one internal resonance between the lowest boom bending mode and the lowest pendular mode of the container is carried out. Continuation of the fixed points of the modulation equations together with stability analysis yields a rich bifurcation behaviour, which features Hopf bifurcations. It is shown that consideration of higher order terms (cubic nonlinearities) beyond the quadratic geometric and inertia nonlinearities breaks the symmetry of the bifurcation equations, shifts the bifurcation points and the stability ranges, and leads to bifurcations not predicted by the low order analysis.