• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.1-6
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• 2019

The mobile elevated work platforms(MEWPs) consist of work platform, extending structure, and car, and it is a facility to move persons to working positions. MEWPs are useful but composed complex pieces of equipments, and accidents are caused by equipment defects. Among them, accidents caused by fracture of the bolts fixing the extension structure and the turntable are increasing. In this study, fatigue failure and fatigue life of a turntable fixing bolt subjected to irregular fatigue load were analyzed by FEA. For this purpose, finite element modeling is proposed and structural analysis and fatigue analysis are performed simultaneously for fixing bolts. As a result of the structural analysis, it was confirmed that there is no risk of permanent deformation because the maximum stress acting on the fixing bolt is lower than the yield strength, and fatigue analysis was confirmed that the fatigue life is less than the design standard. The fatigue analysis results of this study can be effectively used for the design and the documentary assessment of the safety certification of the MEWPs by examining the fatigue life of the turntable fixing bolt.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.1-6
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• 2022

In this study, to confirm the effects of the mixed load of normal and shear forces acting on a fixing bolt, fatigue design criteria were developed by varying the loading angle and conducting tensile and fatigue tests. After evaluating and comparing the test results under different loading angles, the evaluation criteria were selected. These evaluation criteria were then applied to develop the design criteria. An Arcan fixture was designed and manufactured to simultaneously apply a mixed load of normal and shear forces to the fixing bolt of a turntable, and a fatigue test was conducted. S-N diagrams for various loading angles were obtained, and a 1% P-S-N diagram of failure probability was determined using statistical processing techniques. Our results show that failures of the fixing bolt can be prevented using these diagrams as a basis for developing fatigue design criteria.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.1-8
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• 2020

Mobile elevating work platforms (MEWPs) consist of a work platform, extending structure, and chassis, and are used to move persons to working positions. MEWPs are useful but are composed of pieces of equipment, and accidents do occur owing to equipment defects. Among these defects, accidents caused by the fracture of bolts fixed to the extension structure and swing system are increasing. This paper presents a failure analysis of the fixing bolts of MEWP. Standard procedure for failure analysis was employed in this investigation. Visual inspection, chemical analysis, tensile strength measurement, microstructural characterization, fractography analysis by Optical Microscope(OM) and Scanning Electron Microscopy(SEM), and finite element analysis (FEA) were used to analyze the failure of the fixing bolts. Using this failure analysis approach, we found the root cause of failure and proposed a means for solving this type of failure in the future. First, the chemical composition of the fixing bolt is obtained by a spectroscopy chemical analysis method, which determined that the chemical composition matched the required standard. The tensile test showed that the tensile and yield strengths were within the required capacity. The stress analysis was carried out at five different boom angles, and it was determined that the fixing bolt of MEWP can withstand the loads at all the boom angles. The outcomes of the fatigue analysis revealed that the fixing bolt fails before reaching the design requirements. The results of the fatigue analysis showed primarily that the failure of the fixing bolt was due to fatigue. A visual inspection of the fractured section of the fixing bolt also confirmed the fatigue failure. We propose a method to prevent failure of the fixing bolt of the MEWP from four different standpoints: the manufacturer, safety certification authority, safety inspection agency, and owner.