Vessel crane control system upgrade

Benefits

• A high availability PLC to minimise the impact of a failure
• Real time operator information to improve performance
• Readily available spares to maximise up-time
• Accurate manuals and drawings to optimise knowledge
• Onshore support structure for troubleshooting.

Challenge

Obsolete controls systems reduce adaptability and are often not supported by original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in the event of a failure.

To mitigate the risk of this and to ensure their deck crane on the vessel had sufficient capacity to programme additional steps required to de-rate it, our client appointed the Altrad Sparrows to upgrade their crane’s control system.

Solution

By supplying and installing a replacement control circuit we provided our client with a solution that allows for future upgrades to be implemented easily and quickly.

• The control circuit was designed to fit with a Siemens S7-400H with high availability which was chosen as the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)
• A high availability PLC increases reliability as it consists of two Central Processing Units (CPU) linked over fibre optic so in the event of a failure on one, the other CPU takes over control
• The design incorporated all the cranes original functionality with the addition of de-rating to allow the pedestal life extension program to take place. As part of the upgrade a new Safe Load Indicator (SLI) was added to allow the crane to conform to BS EN 13852
• A Human Machine Interface (HMI) was added into the operators cab to display all operational information in an ergonomic design to the operator when performing lifts.

Summary

• In house control panel design and build
• PLC & HMI programming
• Siemens 412H PLC Redundant CPU
• Siemens ET200M remote I/O station
• Siemens TP1200 HMI
• Mipeg 2000R advanced crane load monitoring system
• Industrial high speed communication network.