A Brief Introduction To Portal Cranes At Ports

A portal crane is a typical slewing boom type crane that runs on rails. The portal crane has a gate-like shape, hence the name. Portal cranes are widely used for cargo loading and unloading at ports, docks, shipyards, and large hydropower stations.

Portal cranes developed along with the port industry. In 1890, for the first time, a fixed slewing boom type crane with a fixed amplitude was mounted on a semi-portal running across the top of a narrow dock, becoming the early port semi-portal crane. As the dock width increased, portal and semi-portal cranes developed in parallel, and pitching booms and horizontal luffing systems were widely adopted.

After World War II, port portal cranes quickly developed into portal cranes with rotating parts connected to the column body or rolling bearing type rotating support devices with large bearings connected to the portal, in order to facilitate multiple cranes to work in parallel on the same ship, reduce the tail diameter of the rotating parts, and reduce the dock cover area (the projection of the portal body on the ground). In the course of development, portal cranes were gradually popularized and applied to working conditions similar to ports, such as shipyards and hydropower station sites.

Portal cranes, commonly known as “gantry cranes”, refer to cranes traditionally used at the front of port docks. On the gate-shaped base running along the ground track, a slewing boom is set up, which has four coordinated working mechanisms of lifting, slewing, luffing, and running. The portal can pass through railway trains or other vehicles, and can carry out ship-to-ship loading and unloading and direct transfer operations.

Portal cranes have the advantages of beautiful appearance, safe and reliable work, advanced performance, convenient maintenance, and durability. They are widely used in the loading and unloading operations of various ports and docks, and are the ideal models for multi-cargo docks in comprehensive ports. They are also the main models with the largest number of existing models in large bulk and comprehensive docks.

Portal cranes have extremely high adaptability to cargo types: except for professional liquid bulk docks for loading and unloading oil products, liquefied gas, etc., portal cranes are basically suitable for loading and unloading all kinds of cargo at docks, such as iron ore, grain, coal, bauxite, cement, wood, steel plates, oversized pieces, shipbuilding, bagged solid chemicals, general cargo, containers, etc., and this model can also be flexibly applied to both loading and unloading operations. The advantage of portal cranes in the diversity of applicable operations is not only reflected in the versatility of a single berth, but also more obvious when the port equipment needs to be reformed, upgraded or relocated due to factors such as dock planning and market route changes in large ports.