Quiet and failure-free plastic energy chain in container loading crane

Profile

• What was needed: P4 rol e-chain®
• Requirements: It needed a quiet e-chain due to the port's proximity to a residential area. As this is the only loading crane at the port, the cable guidance must also be completely fail-safe.
• Industry: Crane construction
• Success for the customer: The design enables low-noise rolling of the chain, while the necessary drive force of the e-chain has been reduced to less than 25%.

The container loading crane is located close to a residential area. Therefore, a low-noise cable guidance had to be found.

Problem

This application is a large loading crane at a port in Austria for loading containers for ship, rail and lorry.
The plant operators faced particular obstacles in implementing the energy and cable guidance for the trolley, as the port is located close to a densely populated residential area. Due to the special noise protection requirements, the noise development of the entire plant was not allowed to exceed 78dbA. Further requirements for the cable guidance focused on the robustness and essential fail-safety of the system. A failure of the crane would immediately lead to the failure of the entire terminal.

Solution

The high demands on noise protection and reliability led the plant operators to look into our plastic energy chains. In the terminal they now use our energy chain solution of the type P4. The system is highly suitable for high cable weights and long travels. The design allows the chain to roll quietly, with the upper run rollers passing through the lower run rollers. By reducing the necessary drive force of the e-chain to less than 25%, moving the chain is made much easier. The travel speed of 2.5 metres per second for the trolley in the application is therefore no problem for the chain system, which travels along a path of 113 metres.
In addition to the energy chain system, we also supplied chainflex cables pre-assembled and fitted with connectors, as well as the trough in which the chain travels.

The P4 type energy chain is low-noise and reduces the required drive force by 25%.