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Intermodal Road and Rail Vehicles and Maritime Vessels
Published in Lowe FCILT David, Intermodal Freight Transport, 2006
Claiming to make terminal turnaround faster for savings in time, money, and manpower, the piggyback system of rail wagon rental company Tiphook Rail enables semi-trailers complying with European weights and dimensions legislation to be driven on to a specially built rail wagon via a swinging centre load-platform (see diagram in Figure 12.4). To carry out the simple (10 minutes) loading/unloading procedure, the wagon-mounted platform is swung out to the loading/unloading position, powered by an auxiliary power pack or by the tractive unit’s power system, and the semi-trailer is reversed on to the platform via independent loading ramps. When the semi-trailer is in position, the tractive unit is unhitched and the platform is swung back to its closed (travelling) position. The semi-trailer is secured by its fifth-wheel kingpin locating in a locking plate on the forward superstructure of the wagon. Since no specialized handling equipment is necessary, this operation can take place anywhere adjacent to a rail siding with hard standing. Besides the loading/unloading system described for this wagon, there are other operating possibilities including loading of semi-trailers by means of traditional overhead lifting equipment at existing terminals, or more versatility can be added by incorporating locking points for containers and swap bodies on the wagon platform. These piggyback wagons can form part of a mixed freight train, or a sufficient number of wagons can form a dedicated trainload.
Suspension and Steering
Published in Andrew Livesey, Basic Motorsport Engineering, 2012
When the steering wheel is turned, this turns the steering column that operates the mechanism of the steering box. The cross-shaft is the output from the steering box, which moves the drop-arm. This pushes or pulls the drag link, which operates the steering lever, which is attached to the offside stub axle. The offside wheel is thereby moved in the required direction. The wheel hub is mounted on the stub axle, which pivots on the kingpin in the beam axle. The track rod is attached to the offside steering lever so that it moves transversely when the offside wheel is turned. This moves the nearside track rod end (TRE), which is attached to the nearside steering arm, which steers the nearside stub axle and the nearside wheel.
Influence of in-wheel motors on the wheel shimmy of 4 WID electric vehicles
Published in Maksym Spiryagin, Timothy Gordon, Colin Cole, Tim McSweeney, The Dynamics of Vehicles on Roads and Tracks, 2018
Ning Zhang, Ying Xu, Gang Li, Xiaogao Li, Nan Chen
4-wheel independent driving (4 WID) electric vehicles (EVs) abandon the internal combustion engine and the follow-up traditional driveline, using the in-wheel motors (IWMs) as the power source instead. It not only increases the unsprung mass and its moment of inertia, but also increased its moment of inertia around the kingpin of the steering system. A bigger unsprung mass increases the dynamic wheel load and consequently has influence on the vehicle stability and comfort. Meanwhile, an increased moment of inertia should also affect the response characteristics of the vehicle system. Unfortunately, few research was conducted to reveal such influences.
Hopf bifurcation and energy transfer of automobile shimmy system with consideration of road roughness excitation
Published in Vehicle System Dynamics, 2022
Heng Wei, Jianwei Lu, Hangyu Lu, Lei Shi, Bofu Wu, Ping Jiang
Then the kinetic energy T, potential energy U and dissipative energy D of the shimmy system are: where J is the inertia moment of the right front wheel about its kingpin; is the unsprung mass; is the sprung mass; is the equivalent angular stiffness of the steering system; is the vertical stiffness of the tire; q is the road roughness excitation; k is the stiffness of the suspension; is the equivalent angular damping of the steering system; c is the damping of the suspension.
VTT – a virtual test truck for modern simulation tasks
Published in Vehicle System Dynamics, 2021
Georg Rill, Florian Bauer, Mathias Kirchbeck
Regardless of the axle suspension, the steering motion of the front wheels is computed by solving the constraint equation that describes the actions of the drag link and the toe bar. If describes the angle at the steer box input, the steering angle of the left front wheel about the kingpin is defined by as a nonlinear function of steering angle and the axle motions z, α because the kingpin is fixed to the axle body. The toe bar transfers the steer motion of the left wheel with to the right wheel. In this particular case, the significant compliance in the overall steering system is the torsional flexibility of steering column, which is taken into account in the torque input to the steer box.
Friction detection from stationary steering manoeuvres
Published in Vehicle System Dynamics, 2020
To generate a mathematical description of the localised contributions of the tyre patch, the contact patch can be described in terms of lateral and longitudinal coordinates, x and y. The longitudinal coordinate is bounded on the fore and aft ends by the patch half-length, a, while the lateral coordinate is bounded by the patch half-width, w, on the inboard and outboard sides. The origin of the patch, , is assumed to be the geometric centre of the patch, while the centre of rotation is defined by the intersection of the steering kingpin axis and the ground at . The steering angle, δ, is taken to be a rotation in the z direction since the inclination angle of the kingpin axis is typically small.