Shipbuilding crane manipulator with closed-chain structure: structural design and kinematic performance analysis

\nTraditional shipbuilding crane manipulator is widely used in the process of block lifting and erection of ships, but there are generally problems, such as inflexible output trajectory, limited workspace and low working efficiency. In order to solve above problems, a novel hybrid shipbuilding crane manipulator with closed-chain structure and weakly-coupled characteristics based on multi-DOF (Degree-of-Freedom) mechanism is proposed. Then, a systematically structural and kinematic modeling and analysis method is presented to describe the coupling degree, singular configurations, workspace, motion trajectory, dexterity capacity and static stiffness performances of this type of closed-chain structure mechanism. Results of the numerical examples verify the correctness, accuracy and efficiency of the proposed method. Meanwhile, compared with the traditional shipbuilding crane manipulator, the proposed novel manipulator can finish lifting and transportation operation more efficient, which can also be applied in fields such as: innovative design of oil and gas drilling platforms, deck machinery, construction machinery and other engineering equipment.\n