DEVELOPMENT AND DESIGN OF THE SPECIAL VEHICLE FOR THE TRANSPORTATION OF HEAVY WEIGHT CONSTRUCTION MACHINES

Abstract

A big issue in the construction industry is the transportation of the heavyweight machines from urban areas or production facilities to the construction site and back. Nowadays, low loader trailers are utilized for this kind of transport. They are towed by trucks, where the transport speed is significantly decreased and the ability to reach the construction site is also reduced. To overcome this difficulty, it is necessary to eliminate the low loader trailers from the transportation equipment and use special automotive vehicles. This paper presents the design of one of them. The structure of a standard vehicle with 32-tone gross weight is upgraded to carry and transport heavyweight construction machines. Also, the rear end is equipped with a hydraulically powered ramp for loading the machine onto the vehicle and unloading it off the vehicle. The stress analysis of the upgraded structure was conducted by the finite element method (FEM) and the optimization was carried out. The stress analysis was done for four different case studies. The stress and the deformation results confirmed the validity of such a design solution for the transportation of heavyweight construction machines.