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| Container-Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) Bridge control with industrial PCs | | Maximum transshipment performance in the CTA | The first expansion stage of the worlds largest container terminal is in operation in Hamburg harbor, the second stage will be completed by the year 2004/2005. The Container-Terminal Altenwerder (CTA) is the first largely automated system of container bridges, portal cranes, driverless transport vehicles and rail loading bridgeheads. Already 60 industrial PCs and an integrated SCADA/crane management system from Siemens guarantee trouble-free, transparent processes and thus an optimum transshipment performance.
The builders of the CTA are the Hamburger Hafen- und Lagerhaus-AG (HHLA) and Hapag-Lloyd. From mid-2004 onwards 1.9 million standard containers (TEU) will be unloaded from ships, stored and distributed annually - and vice versa. On an approximately 1.4 km long quay on the Southern Elbe four large container ships can be loaded and unloaded simultaneously with 13 so-called Super Postpanmax container bridgeheads faster than ever before.
Automatic, driverless transport vehicles (AGVs) take over the transportation of the containers to and from the 225,000 m2 container stores behind the quay. Rail-linked, automatically operated portal cranes are in operation here. At the connected terminal railway station four transtainer bridges with slewing crabs span six parallel rails for the handling of up to 700 m long container trains.
The Super Postpanmax container bridgeheads automated with control and drive technology from Siemens I&S Bremen provide interfaces between water and land sides. Two independently operating trolleys enable a high degree of automation. The waterside main trolley transports one container in semi-automatic mode - two in twin mode - from the ship to a lashing platform in the bridge portal. The second, fully automatic portal trolley takes over the container from there and hands it over to the AGVs underneath the portal which bring it automatically to the predetermined storage point.
Homogeneous solution
The extensive automation technology for loading and unloading ships and handover/takeover of containers from the AGVs is integrated in the master control system of the central control room. Right at the top of every container bridge there is an E(lectrical)-house connected to the drawing machinery, the equipment of which has been designed and installed by the Siemens division I&S (Industrial Solutions and Services).
The dynamic and precise movements of a container bridge are guaranteed by converters and inverters of the Simoreg DC Master and Simovert Masterdrives VC series as well as with approximately 50 adapted DC and three-phase current motors from Siemens. The achieved homogeneity of the automation solution simplifies the engineering above all.
The nucleus is a central crane control Simatic S7-400 which communicates via Profibus FDL (Fieldbus Data Link) among other things with a HIPAC Antipendulum control, a laser measuring system and a monitoring control. The second Simatic S7-400 monitors the main control and switches off the system under control in the case of malfunctions which are critical to the safety. Centimeter-accurate automatic positioning even for pendulum lengths of more than 50 m is enabled by the Antipendulum control HIPAC. Both PLC s are connected to the PC-based HMI system by fiber optic cables and switches.
Simatic Box PC - robust basis for performance
Five Simatic Box PCs 820 with high vibration and shock resistance in operation form the hardware basis of this HMI system. They share the many varied tasks in a server-client configuration and are integrated in the total system via Industrial Ethernet in FOC technology. No savings have been made in the communication paths: the standard in addition to the potential isolated Profibus DP/MPI link is one interface each for Ethernet, USB, serial and parallel peripherals. One of the five box PCs acts as a server for three clients, the displays of which are located in the E-house, the crane cabin on the waterside main trolley and in the cabin of the bridge supervision above the lashing platform. An integrated version of Europe's leading SCADA system Simatic WinCC and the SCADA system SICMA (Siemens Crane Management System) specially developed for the crane management run one the server.
Exact distribution of jobs
Basic tasks such as system visualization, error message system and communication to the PLC are taken care of by WinCC. Crane-specific functions such as handling of operation, production and trace data as well as the calibration are solved on the other hand using the standardized SICMA modules "fault diagnostic", "operation data", "trace" and "condition monitoring WinCC" as well as the "calibration" component specially developed for this project. The master CTA error signaling and diagnosis system (FMDS) visualizes and collects the error messages of all transshipment units of the terminal at a central point.
The E-house client is at the same time a gateway-PC through which all other clients of a bridge can be switched over to via the Net-Support-Manager. From here the land side devices can also be coordinated. The distributed units crane cabin and bridge supervision cabin have a specially adapted scope of functions at their disposal. A Box PC in the network is provided for example exclusively for the laser verification system. Four laser scanners which pick up the distance between the container or spreader and the AGV during the handover enable centimeter-accurate automatic positioning in cooperation with the crane control.
The bridge driver working near to the main trolley has an optimum view of the process on two monitors in the crane cabin. He also gets the order data from the CTA computers in the E-house and, via the WinCC/SICMA system the current main bridge data relevant for safe operation such as the total load on the lifting gear of main and portal trolleys, their lifting gear positions in X and Z direction, wind direction and speed as well as the boom angle. Detailed information about every single process step can be displayed by pressing a function key or clicking the mouse.
The bridge supervision on the lashing platform is responsible for the high quality of the transshipment data. With the best view of the containers, the data are updated as required and the automatic portal trolley runs started.
Safe processes
Similar tasks are performed by two Simatic Box PCs 820 at the railway loading bridges. There the containers are loaded from the storage area onto trains and vice versa. The lighting installations of all container bridges, a telephone system and a camera system were also planned and installed by Siemens I&S Bremen.
Via another three Box PCs of the successor model Simatic PC 840 on each of the seven bridges delivered up till now, the operators receive their transport jobs from the central control system and current states are fed back to it. All in all, 60 Simatic industrial PCs are already providing trouble-free processes and a high transshipment performance in the Container-Terminal Altenwerder. The final stage of expansion will have almost twice as many. |  |
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