Diminishing Safety Margins of Telescoping-Boom Aerial Lifts

As the height of telescoping-boom aerial lifts increase, the severity of tip-over accidents obviously increases. To reduce the probability of tip-over accidents, manufacturers use countermeasures such as outriggers and wheel axels that expand in width to provide a more stable base, counterweights to offset the moments generated by the telescoping boom, and controllers that limit the machine configurations to within stable envelopes. The size of stability margins is determined by industry standards that set the approved load capacity of the machine to less than the load that would induce tip-over. This paper investigates the effectiveness of such load-based safety margins for very tall aerial lifts with telescoping-booms. The results indicate that the industry standards result in both inconsistent and often low safety margins.