Jeroen Van Wittenberghe

TITLE: Increasing The Reliability of Overhead Cranes Through Structural Health Monitoring

In steel manufacturing plants heavy duty overhead cranes are used. Due to the cyclic nature of the service loads the cranes and runway girders are susceptible to fatigue failure. In this paper the results of the SafeLife project are presented where methodologies have been developed to predict fatigue damage through load monitoring using optical fibre strain monitoring.