Tipping Cylinder has Low Weight and High Strength

The integrated ram-and-tank design of Edbro's CX14 tipping cylinder is suited to rigid trucks used in the quarrying, mining, construction, waste disposal, road building and general haulage industries. The European directives that have been implemented over recent years, with the aim of reducing vehicle emissions, have left body builders and truck operators struggling with the problem of reducing the weight of truck-mounted equipment in order to maximise payloads, without compromising quality or performance.

One area where real savings in weight can be achieved is tipping hydraulics, or, more precisely, via the telescopic cylinders that provide the mechanism for tipping. Edbro's newly designed CX14 tipping cylinder serves to offset the added weight resulting from Euro 5 legislation, offering ease of integration for body builders and weight savings of up to 230kg against competitor products for the same application. This allows the end user a potential increase in payload: 1.15 tonnes per day on a typical five-loads-per-day schedule (0.23 per load); or 5.75 tonnes for a five-day week.

Multiplying this figure by 48, the typical number of working weeks, produces a total for extra payload per year: in this case 276 tonnes. In cash terms, taking a figure of GBP5 rate per tonne, this equates to GBP1,380 of additional income for the truck operator each year, or a potential saving of GBP8,280 over the life of the chassis, assuming this to be six years. Edbro achieved the weight reductions that made these savings possible by using the latest 3D modelling and Finite Element Analysis (FEA) techniques, combined with Edbro's one-piece laser-welded tube construction.

The new design was for a cylinder of 22-25 tonnes nominal lift capacity with 32-tonne nominal truck GVW. It called for a cylinder that was able to tip the nominal legal loads in typical working conditions which included inclines of up to 10deg, with no reduction in performance or durability. The design also targeted a weight saving of at least 60kg on Edbro's previous CX15 model and called for 30 per cent faster tipping times to improve productivity. Furthermore, the same safety factor of 1.5 applied across of all Edbro's tipping cylinders has been applied.

The benefit of this is that the CX14 will lift the legal body and payload on an eight-wheel vehicle with a 1.5 factor of safety. The use of FEA in the design of the CX14 was key to the substantial weight reduction that has been achieved by Edbro. The CX14 is a fully integrated unit with its own tank assembly; and it was in this area that Edbro design engineers employed FEA and 3D modelling techniques. These were used to investigate the plate thickness and the plate shape of the tank assembly, its shell thickness and material specification.

The aim of the analysis was to find the areas of maximum stress and reinforce these; at the same time removing metal from areas where stress was at a minimum. The fact that this process has succeeded is evidenced by the fact that the CX14 is up to 230kg lighter than many of its competitors in the tipping market. Also contributing heavily to the low-weight, high-strength design of both the CX and CS series is Edbro's one-piece tube construction. The tubes are laser welded to ensure the required levels of tube concentricity and high-quality welds demanded by the compact design.

The construction maximises cylinder strength at the top of each extended stage to resist side loads induced by the body during tipping. It also provides high cylinder stiffness at full extension. At the conclusion of its FEA and 3D modelling programme, Edbro built prototypes of the CX14 and instituted an exhaustive test programme to correlate the FEA results with actual empirical test results. The empirical tests were undertaken by Edbro customers and on Edbro's own tipping rig, the aim being to simulate the worst possible conditions under which a tipping cylinder can operate. The results of the field tests revealed a close correlation between theoretical and actual performance parameters for the CX range.

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