ANALYSIS OF STRENGTH OF A FORK OF THE FORKLIFT BY NUMERICAL METHODS

Abstract

Forklift is an industrial power truck, commonly called forklifts or lift trucks, then usually have two forks the can be trial power truck used forklifting and transport materials. Fork-lifts, to this day, the fork strength of a forklift under load still seems to be one of the biggest issues. Fork’s related structural design and detail have a significant impact on the overall performance and reliability of a forklift. In this work, static analyses of a fork forklift were performed using Finite Element Method, on the free software FreeCAD, a multidisciplinary software application that is the result of a long-term active collaboration between develop-ers and users. Open science hardware is cheaper, easier to maintain, and more accessible to more people. In this paper, by calculating the maximum normal stress of the section, the force situation and allowable stress of the fork are analyzed. The fork is made of structural material is 40Cr steel. The output values of the static study consist in establishing the distri-bution of equivalent unitary stresses (stress state) according to the von Mises criterion. The maximum stress of the structure is 128 MPa, which is does not exceed the allowable. Then in order to enhance the structural strength of the weak part, the measures of gradually in-creasing the fillet radius of the fork root were proposed, and the radius were selected as 35mm and 45mm, the weight of the forklift load was still 0,5t. Numerical experiments have shown that by increasing the radius from 25 to 45 mm, stresses decrease by 1.1...1.15 times, which is consistent with the theory of basic mechanics that stress concentration can easily lead to fatigue failure of the structure. Both numerical calculations and visual analysis showed consistency, with stress concentrations observed at the fork neck, demonstrating the accuracy of the established finite element model.