i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 1 ( 2 0 1 6 ) 1 5 8 1 7 e1 5 8 2 0

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he

Research on unattended hoisting in solid waste

disposal
Chaoming He*, Rong Yu, Zilong Chen, Haoran Sun
School of Mechanical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu 610031, China

article info

abstract

Article history:

Collection, transfer and storage of solid waste cannot do without hoisting work. Hoisting

Received 25 March 2016

operators are usually exposed to bad working circumstances. Studying the precise on-

Accepted 27 April 2016

ground locating of solid waste carriers and auto offset correcting gripper design with no

Available online 24 May 2016

need of precise locating are the key to accomplishing unattended operation. This paper
proposes a combination of slidable flat washer and four-jaw auto-centering chuck to meet

Keywords:

the clamping requirement and provide millimeter-grade carrier locating precision; reali-

Solid waste disposal

zation of auto offset correction by use of the clamping jaws of a quasi-planetary gear

Conveyance

structure is a guarantee of hoisting work on the carrier in the condition of gripper swinging.

Automation

The feasibility of the fruit of the paper has been verified by hoisting work in the disposal of
nuclear waste and hazardous waste.
2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction
In CHINA, solid wastes are divided into ordinary industrial
solid waste, hazardous waste and municipal household
refuse. Among industrial solid wastes, harmful residues are
toxic, flammable, corrosive, disease communicating and
chemically reactive solid wastes or other harmful solid wastes
discharged in industrial production. Hazardous wastes have
one or more hazardous features, such as corrosivity, toxicity,
flammability, reactivity and infectivity. The amount of
municipal solid wastes produced in CHINA increases year by
year; municipal household refuse picked up and conveyed
countrywide amounted to 0.164 billion tons in 2011 [1].
Municipal solid wastes are normally characteristic of high
organic content and high moisture content and may produce a
lot of foul gas in their treatment and disposal processes, such

as collection, transfer, storage, biochemical treatment and

landfill [2,3]. Collection, transfer and storage, as necessary in
solid waste treatment and disposal processes, can't do
without hoisting work.
In a nuclear environment, remote control of a bridge
crane outside the storehouse is adopted due to the hazard
of radioactivity in the working environment [4]. Conventional way of nuclear-grade crane control requires highprecision locating design; hence the impossibility to
widely transplant the unattended system of nuclear-grade
cranes to conventional solid waste disposal process. To
prevent hoisting operators from working in a toxic, infectious, radiation or foul environment, this paper describes
researches on a key technique for unattended carrier
locating and auto offset correcting gripper design for solid
waste hoisting work, so as to provide the possibility of
remote control by operators.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: fly2005@126.com (C. He).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.04.185
0360-3199/ 2016 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

15818

i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 1 ( 2 0 1 6 ) 1 5 8 1 7 e1 5 8 2 0

Problems and limitations in connection with

locating precision in a solid waste disposal
hoisting process
In an actual hoisting process, a crane is allowed to play 40 mm
or more laterally, instead of operating along a straight line
parallel with the track, during operation or braking. Adjusting
deviation wheel may avoid or reduce lateral reciprocating
traverse, as shown in Fig. 1. Bridge cranes main girder camber
is described in Ref. [5] in the following way: when the unloaded trolley stays at the limit position, the highest point on the
arch of the main girder after a static load test should lie in the
range of S/10 in the middle of the span and its value should be
no less than O.7S/1000. Dynamic change of cart/trolley track
parallelism and levelness error and main girder camber during work inevitably results in the failure of crane wheels to
travel along the center of the track.
During crane conveyance, the effect of external resistance (wind force, friction, etc.) and variation in drive motor
speed may cause problems like imprecise trolley locating
and great amplitude of load swing [6,7]. The anti-swing
control limits swing continuously by altering the speed
command signal sent to the converter, as shown in Fig. 2.
There is little or nearly no swing when the object reaches
the set speed or stops. The anti-swing control is unable to
eliminate gripper swing fundamentally and the automated
system really costs.
Existing precise locating systems and anti-swing control
systems for hoisting work cannot be widely generalized to
solid waste disposal. There are two key parts when it comes
to solid waste hoisting process: solid waste carrier onground locating and gripper-carrier alignment design. This

paper is to deliberate relevant easy-to-generalize designs

respectively.

A new-type precise locating technique for solid

waste carriers
On-ground precise locating of solid waste carriers is prerequisite to hoisting work automation. Since gripper swing is
impossible to eliminate, increase in solid waste carrier
locating precision as far as possible can reduce the requirement on gripper locating precision.
With auto-centering function, a four-jaw chuck meets the
clamping requirement and provides millimeter-grade locating
precision. If it exerts a force directly on the carrier, sliding
friction between the carrier and ground will possibly result in
carrier tilting or tumbling. This paper proposes to add a
transitional piece between ground and the carrier, or a plane
retainer package with steel balls and a flat washer, which form
a flat washer assembly. When the four-jaw chuck contacts the
carrier, it will give a thrust in the horizontal direction to the
carrier; since friction between the carrier and the flat washer
assembly is greater than that between the balls and ground,
there is no relative motion between the carrier and the assembly, and original sliding friction between the carrier and
ground is changed to rolling friction between the balls and
ground.
The diameters of the four-jaw chuck, the carrier and the
flat washer form the following relation: d1 L2 L3,
L1 L2 L3 L4. It can be then guaranteed that there is no
need to do any relative motion between the carrier and the
washer in any cases, as shown in Figs. 3 and 4. L1, L2 and d1 in
the equation are determined by the designer and L3 and L4 can
be then determined.

Fig. 1 e Cart with horizontal offset-adjusting wheels.

Fig. 3 e Schematic of precise solid waste carrier locating.

Fig. 2 e Anti-swing control card system.

Fig. 4 e Model of precise waste solid carrier locating.

i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 1 ( 2 0 1 6 ) 1 5 8 1 7 e1 5 8 2 0

The value of L1 taken can be determined depending on the

travel precision of cranes cart and trolley and the sum of the
max values of gripper swing. After the upper end of the chuck
opens, its max diameter must not exceed 2L1 d1, with L1  L2.
With the circle center of d3 as center, the eccentric radius can
be equal to L1 at most when the carrier is placed; this can
guarantee that the carrier is put on the flat washer, as shown
in Fig. 4.

Auto-centering gripper design with no need of

precise locating
A gripper is a necessary device for a crane to accomplish
hoisting. At present, the most commonly used grippers for
cranes during work mainly include lifting hook, suction cup
and some special clamps. To handle some objects of special
structural style, however, its necessary to devise special
grippers adapted to them.
At present, most of the nuclear waste solidifying barrels
and storage well covers commonly used in CHINA take a
slinger-type structure, as shown in Fig. 5. The structure advantages design of the auto offset correcting gripper devised
in this paper and increase of safety during unmanned work.
Pertinent to the structure, a gripper with auto offset correcting
locating is devised in this paper.
Common inner tension structures include wedge-type
tension and cam tension; units of the structures in all directions can act simultaneously during tension and applied
forces in all directions are identical as well.
Tapered wedge type tension is to convert wedges motion in
the vertical direction into sliders horizontal motion through
the coordinated action of the wedge and the slider. During
work, the wedge is what applies a force while the slider is
what receives it; moreover, there are some auxiliary devices
such as guide plate, spring and screw. During design, tapered
wedge type tension entails consideration of the inclination
angle of the wedge and the slider. Increase in the angle will
reduce friction between the wedge and the slider and reduce
abrasion, but sliders operating stroke will decrease and
wedges stroke will increase with increased angle. Therefore
during design, the angle should be reasonably optimized to
service requirements and the ability of self-lock should also be
considered.
A cam type tension mechanism consists mainly of a cam
fixed on the rack and followers. When the cam rotates, it
pushes out or pulls back the push rod by use of its own welldesigned contour curve. Structurally simple, a cam type tension mechanism only requires design of a proper contour
curve to allow the rod any expected action. It is, however, point
or line contact between the cam and the rod, which can easily
cause abrasion to the mechanism; the stroke of the rod should
not be too long or else the cam may be made cumbersome.

Fig. 5 e Schematic of carriers slinger-type structure.

15819

Similar to the tooling of tapered wedge and cam type tension structures, a special gripper needs to achieve extension
and retraction of its own hanging jaws. With reference to cam
tension structure, therefore, the style of the extension and
retraction mechanism of special grippers hanging jaws is
shown in Fig. 6.
To accomplish reliable transfer of power, the way of gear
transmission is adopted to connect grippers hanging jaws and
the drive part; when the main driving axle rotates, mesh
transmission between the main drive gear and counter drive
gear allows grippers hanging jaws to rotate out and retract.
During hoisting, the diameter of grippers circumcircle is
smaller than carriers slinger and the special gripper is so
required to have offset correcting function; in other words, the
gripper should be able to adjust its own position during
hoisting, if its center and carriers axial line are not in a same
straight line, so that its center aligns with the axial line of the
solidifying barrel or well cover as far as possible to diminish
system locating error.
If the gripper deviates to the limit position (as shown in
Fig. 7), i.e. The grippers circumcircle becoming tangent to the
slinger, grippers three hanging jaws rotate out simultaneously
at the moment and the jaw block will get in contact with
slingers inside face; their continued rotating-out will push the

Fig. 6 e Quasi-planetary gear structures hanging jaw

transmission.

Fig. 7 e Schematic of grippers offset correction principle.

15820

i n t e r n a t i o n a l j o u r n a l o f h y d r o g e n e n e r g y 4 1 ( 2 0 1 6 ) 1 5 8 1 7 e1 5 8 2 0

reduced and offset correcting function is better accomplished,

see Fig. 8.

Conclusion

Fig. 8 e Schematic of the whole gripper.

gripper to the position of slingers axial line, thereby accomplishing offset correcting function.
If the gripper presses directly on the slinger, considerable
friction will arise, due to grippers own weight, on the contact
face between the gripper and the slinger during correction and
increase motors torque during correction. For this reason,
three bracketing blocks mounted with rollers are devised to
change sliding friction between the gripper and the slinger to
rolling friction. By doing so, motors output torque is greatly

The onsite test of the teamwork of the carrier and the gripper
designed in this paper is shown in Fig. 9. This paper analyzes
the bad working environment in solid waste disposal and
transfer processes and, from the perspective of machinery
manufacturing, automatic control and crane motion, analyzes
the difficulty of locating a crane gripper precisely. It analyzes
the dimensional relation between the flat washer with steel
balls, the four-jaw chuck and the carrier, proposes a highprecision locating system based on the combination of flat
washer with steel balls and four-jaw chuck. With quasiplanetary gear train structure applied, extension and retraction of grippers jaws is realized and so the gripper and the
carrier can accomplish auto-centering offset correction in a
swing condition. The research output of this paper has been
applied to hoisting work for nuclear waste and industrial
harmful residue, and unattended operation has been realized.

Acknowledgments
Funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NO.
51275431), Science and Technology Plan Projects in Sichuan
province, China (NO. 2014GZX0009), and China Scholarship
Council (NO. 201407005085).

references

[1] Zhao Yan, Lu Wenjing, Wang Hongtao, Duan Zhenhan.

Evaluation index system of odor pollution for municipal solid
waste treatment facilities. China Environ Sci
2014;34(7):1804e10.
[2] Schauberger G, Piringer M, Knauder W, Erwin P. Odour
emissions from a waste treatment plant using an inverse
dispersion technique. Atmos Environ 2011;45(9):1639e47.
[3] Scaglia B, Orzi V, Artola A, Font X, Davoli E, Sanchez A,
Adani F, et al. Odours and volatile organic compounds emitted
from municipal solid waste at different stage of
decomposition and relationship with biological stability.
Bioresour Technol 2011;102(7):4638e45.
[4] Luan Xiuchun, Han Weishi, Wang Junling, Yang Aiguang. The
realization of automatic positioning of crane in high precise in
the store house for nuclear waste. Eng Sci 2010;12(3):45e50.
[5] Lifting Appliance of Standardization Administration of China,
Bridge crane for general purpose GB/T 14405e2011.
[6] Hanafy MOmar, Ali HNayfeh. Anti-swing control of gantry
and tower cranes using fuzzy and time-delayed feedback with
friction compensation. Shock Vib 2005;12(2):73e89.
[7] Choi SU, Kim JH, Lee JW, Lee YJ, Lee KS. A study on gantry
crane control using neural network two degree of PID
controller. In: Pusan. Proceedings of the 2001 IEEE
international symposium on industrial electronics, vol. 3.
IEEE; 2001. p. 1896e900.

Fig. 9 e Picture of onsite solidifying barrel raising test.