Intelligent computer-automated crane design using an online crane prototyping tool

Abstract

In an accompanying paper submitted concurrently to this conference, we present our first complete version of a generic and modular software framework for intelligent computer-automated product design. The framework has been implemented with a client-server software architecture that automates the design of offshore cranes. The framework was demonstrated by means of a case study where we used a genetic algorithm (GA) to optimise the crane design of a real and delivered knuckleboom crane. For the chosen objective function, the optimised crane design outperformed the real crane. In this paper, we augment our aforementioned case study by implementing a new crane optimisation client in Matlab that uses a GA both for optimising a set of objective functions and for multi-objective optimisation. Communicating with an online crane prototyping tool, the optimisation client and its GA are able to optimise crane designs with respect to two selected design criteria: the maximum safe working load and the total crane weight. Our work demonstrates the modularity of the software framework as well as the viability of our approach for intelligent computer-automated design, whilst the results are valuable for informing future directions of our research.