Analysis of fatal accidents of hydraulic excavators with crane operations and increase of working radius due to swing of a load during propelling.

Abstract

As hydraulic excavators are widely used as construction machines, they are a cause of many labour accidents. In recent years, hydraulic excavators equipped with a crane function have been developed and widely used; however, many labour accidents during crane operation have also occurred. In this study, we analysed the fatal accidents (involving 179 workers) caused by hydraulic excavators during the five years from 2010 to 2014, and investigated their causes. The analysis revealed that 23.5% (42 workers) cases of fatal accidents were caused by the crane operations.

In addition, the dynamic behaviour of a lifted load on a propelling excavator was measured by using an actual machine. It was observed that it is important to confirm the flatness of the site and decrease the propelling speed in order to reduce the fluctuation in the lifted load during the propelling of an excavator.