Application Status and Development Analysis of Rubber Tire Gantry Crane

Rubber tire gantry crane is a special lifting machine for loading, unloading, transportation, and stacking transportation in container terminal. At present, lifting weight of most of rubber tire gantry crane is 30 st, span is the width of six containers and one chassis lanes, lifting height is generally stacking 4 over 5, that is 11-12m. The main advantages of rubber tire gantry crane are that it can effectively use the yard, the cost of yard construction is relative low, flexible, and high universality. Rubber tire gantry crane can not only go forward and back up, but also be equipped with steering, through the 90°rotation of wheels, the rubber tire gantry crane can move from one container area to another.

Present situation of rubber tire gantry crane

With the increase of rubber tire gantry crane throughout, the improving requirements to handling efficiency and economic performance, as well as the improvement of modern science and technology, rubber tire gantry crane has been developing rapidly. The following table lists the main parameters and their drive and control method of several rubber tire gantry cranes produced in different years.

Visible from the table, rubber tire gantry crane is developing to large scale, high speed, and modernization. With the development of modern science and technology, the wide application of electromechanical integration technology, the control mode of rubber tire gantry crane has changed fundamentally.

Characteristics of rubber tire gantry crane

In a narrow sense, logistic is the flow of goods and materials, thus we can’t deny the importance of transportation in logistics. The application of container is to make the transportation activities more efficiency. Rubber tire gantry crane has the following characteristics in the transportation of container:

• The walking track of gantry crane is laid directly on the working site, and the height of the walking track surface can be in the same plane as the working space. Therefore, storage area and channel under the crane can be fully utilized.
• Gantry crane is not fixed permanent building, it has little effect if the freight yard rebuilt or changed.
• The two ends of most of rubber tire gantry crane has cantilever with a certain length,  not only the operation area increases, storage space is fully utilized, but also the car and other short distance railway vehicles and handling equipment can be directly used for loading and unloading or reloading and improve handling efficiency, accelerate the vehicle and cargo turnover.
• The rubber tire gantry crane has certain maneuverability, which is not restricted by the track.

Problems that rubber tire gantry crane exists

With the rapid development of world container transport, the supply of short period, high quality RTG has become increasingly strong demand for users.

• Technical parameter: Due to the limitation of the engine generator system, the speed of RTG should not be too fast, otherwise it would be easy to cause the engine stall or stall or speeding.
• Maneuverability: Rubber tire gantry crane can rotate 90°, in order to achieve the transition. However, due to the friction between the tire and ground on both side of the rubber tire gantry crane is different, it is easy to run on the wrong track, thus it must be adjusted continuously, otherwise prone to security accident.
• Operating performance: Rubber tire gantry crane exhausts more waste gas, the noise is larger, seriously interfere with the communication between the driver and the ground personnel, weakening the warning effect of the cart travel warning, easy to cause safety accidents.
• Difficult to achieve full automation operations: Rail mounted gantry crane runs along the fixed rail, without deviation, easy to realize automatic positioning and automatic control, so as to create the necessary conditions for the full automatic operation of container terminal. In contrast, rubber tire gantry crane is difficult to achieve full automation operations

Conclusion

With the increase of the port container throughput, the improvement of the handling efficiency and economic efficiency, as well as the development of modern science and technology, rubber tire gantry crane has developed continuously. The tire gantry crane is developing towards the direction of large scale, high speed and modernization. The design prospect of rubber tire container gantry with no diesel generating set is more and more practical because of the use of a new electric energy storage element.