ANSYS STRUCTURAL: Crane Hook Static Simulation

In this project, we performed a structural simulation of a Crain Hook in ANSYS Static Structural.

What are Crane Hooks?

Crane hooks are the lifting devices used to carry heavy suspended loads in cranes, elevators, or other handling equipment. Single-crane hooks are one of the typical types, consisting of a curved body whose profile.

Geometry Definition:

We modeled the geometry of the computational domain with Design Modeler software. The computational domain corresponds to the body of a single crane hook, including a straight shank and a curved main bend.

Mesh:

We meshed the computational domain to create a discretized domain. An unstructured grid was created, so that about 85,000 elements were generated.

ANSYS Static Structural:

There are different solvers and software available for users for structural modeling. For the present simulation, we utilize the ANSYS Static Structural Solver. The overall procedure and main steps required for static structural simulations include the definition of materials, connections, different types of boundary conditions, and post-processing.

How to define boundary conditions?

First, we defined a force load boundary condition on the inner curved surface of the hook. This force was applied vertically downward to the hook body, representing the weight of the suspended load transmitted into the hook through the chain or rope. Next, we defined a fixed support boundary condition on the top shank of the crane hook. This constrained the hook from any movement, with no degrees of freedom.

What is the purpose of this simulation?

This investigation aims to evaluate the structural response of the crane hook under loading and study the solid behavior with analysis of distributions of the total deformation, elastic strain, and von Mises stress.

Results and discussions:

The total deformation distribution indicates that maximum deflection occurs at the free tip of the hook. As the inner face of the hook is subjected to loading and the free tip of the hook is farthest from the fixed shank, the hook tends to deform slightly. The stress distribution indicates that the maximum stress appears near the critical region of the bend, concentrating on the inner face, because of generating a large moment about the bend.