Tower Crane Location Optimization for Heavy Unit Lifting in High-Rise Modular Construction

Abstract

Modular construction, which involves unit production in factories and on-site work, has benefits such as low cost, high quality, and short duration, resulting from the controlled factory environment utilized. An efficient tower crane lifting plan ensures successful high-rise modular project completion. For improved efficiency, the lifting plan should minimize the reaching distance of the tower crane, because this distance directly affects the tower crane capacity, which is directly related to crane operation cost. In situations where units are lifted from trailers, the trailer-to-tower crane distance can have a significant impact on the tower crane operation efficiency. However, optimization of this distance to improve efficiency has not been sufficiently considered. This research proposes a genetic algorithm optimization model that suggests optimized tower crane and trailer locations. The case study results show that through the proposed model, the project manager can reflect the optimal location selection and optimal tower crane selection options with minimal cost.