The HULK from the Alps comes in support of the lumberjacks
By Giulia Maria Marchetti
Forests around the world are getting older. This is especially true for forests in remote areas, such as mountainous regions. The EU and local governments support the harvesting and transport of timber to promote forest regeneration and the development of new trees. The extraction and transport of timber is particularly critical in steep terrain, such as the European Alps, and is always associated with high costs and low productivity. A recent study by unibz, supervised by prof. Renato Vidoni and partially supported by the Next Generation EU funds of the PNRR Agritech project, shows that South Tyrol has a solution: Hulk. Hulk is an electric, self-driving skyline crane developed by the South Tyrolean company Leitalpin.
Hulk is not only green in colour, but also in concept. In fact, it is a hybrid system, characterised by electric motors capable of turning into generators and recharging an energy storage system by braking energy when transporting wood downhill. This energy can be employed to assist the movement uphill, reducing fuel consumption by up to 100%. The crane's operation is also supported by an auxiliary combustion engine, which is particularly useful on long and steep paths when transporting timber uphill.
The HULK also drastically reduces the logistics involved in harvesting and transporting timber: the system can be installed in less than half a day, and only two operators are needed, one at the felling site and one at the landing area, to attach and detach the trees from the crane. The system was tested by Stefan Leitner, founder of the company Leitalpin, during his doctoral thesis at the FiRST LAB of unibz. In his PhD project, Leitner (supervised by Prof. Renato Vidoni and co-supervised by Prof. Massimiliano Renzi) analysed the performance of the Hulk with a focus on its efficiency in terms of energy saving. Leitner and Vidoni's paper, entitled "Performance and Efficiency Study of a Hybrid Self-Propelled Cable Logging Carriage - Preliminary Results", won the "Gold Best Application Paper Award" at the IFIT 2024 conference.
The conference, under the auspices of IFToMM, the International Federation for the Promotion of Mechanism and Machine Science, was held in Turin in September and brought together experts and researchers in the field of mechanism science. "I think the reason for the award is our strong focus on efficiency and energy saving, two aspects that are very important in today's machine design," says Leitner. Another important recognition for the work of our Faculty of Engineering and another step towards a greener world, not just because of the colour of the Hulk.
Photo: Unsplash
Related people: Renato Vidoni, Stefan Leitner, Massimiliano Renzi