FacEngrPE - isn't the failure of the crane at Russellville different from the Harculo incident?
Russellville crane accident:
1. Temporary crane was brought in for this job and insufficient/incomplete lateral bracing was in place for the load conditions.
2. EOR signed off no need to load test system based on historical use but new installation was not an exact replica of previous use. And new beam sections were installed with no weld inspections.
3. Crane company EOR and team did not properly analyze the lift conditions and the utility and construction engineering teams did not question the crane capacity and installation calculations.
4. Utility and construction contractor engineers agreed to skip the required load tests.
The Russellville incident appears to me to be a case of procedural shortcuts and overconfidence added to create a failure.
Harculo incident:
1. On-site crane probably is sized with capacity for the rotor used in turbine hall. The crane capacity has not documented but it seems somewhat unlikely the turbine hall crane would not be sized to carry the loads expected for the equipment used.
2. Rotor weight is unknown so this may not have been an over- capacity lift - just titles in videos state the rotor weight - but reasonably, the rotor being installed would be a known value that would not change radically from any initial conditions of the installation facility. Unless the recommissioning of the facility changed out the turbine housing, the rotor being installed cannot be bigger than the rotor that was removed and the crane should have been designed for.
The Harculo incident seems to me (from the failure modes that been described using the limited available info) to be a mechanical failure that may have been hard to forsee.
The Russellville incident, unfortunately workers were allowed to be too close to the lift zone and one died and many were injured - the Harculo incident, two workers were lucky that they got out of the danger zone before tragedy struck.
