Feasibility Study of Rough Terrain Crane Electrification through Testing Campaign

The electrification of off-road machines has become a leading topic in recent years, driven by emission requirements that are more and more strict even for such environments. The proposed research activity is applied to a rough terrain crane operated in construction sites. The machine was instrumented and tested to assess its power requirements during material handling tasks, realized following a pre-defined procedure. After filtering and processing the field data, the indication of the engine overall load and fuel consumption was obtained, starting from direct measurements of absorbed hydraulic power. Finally, a full-electric crane model has been developed, performing a preliminary sizing of the powertrain components, and simulated exploiting the test outputs. In the end the feasibility of the electrified solution and the autonomy of the battery-powered system have been assessed and compared with the existing solution.