Abstract
The importance of using timber road transport in the technological process of harvesting and hauling timber has been substantiated. The influence of the design flaws of fifth-wheel couplings on the safety indicators of the road train, its stability, productivity, and fuel consumption, which are manifested during the operation of timber tractors with semitrailers, has been revealed. The work of foreign authors aimed at improving the efficiency of using fifth-wheel couplings used in the designs of tractors with saddle trailer has been considered. The advantages of using the proposed recuperative spring-hydraulic fifth-wheel coupling device in a timber lorry train have been described. They consist in ensuring a simultaneous increase in the reliability of road train, recuperating energy of the working fluid, reducing the magnitude of dynamic loads, as well as ensuring favorable working conditions for the driver. On the basis of the developed mathematical and simulation functioning models of a timber tractor with a saddle trailer equipped with the proposed design of a recuperative spring-hydraulic fifth wheel coupling, computer experiments have been carried out, which made it possible to obtain the dependence of the influence of the inner diameter of the hydraulic cylinder, the stiffness of the springs used in the recuperative spring-hydraulic fifth wheel coupling on the longitudinal acceleration of the semitrailer and the average value of the recovered power. It was revealed that the optimal spring stiffness of the recuperative spring-hydraulic fifth wheel coupling, which is in the range from 150 to 200 kN/m, makes it possible to achieve the value of the average recovered power in the range from 7 to 8.4 kW
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