Hybridisation of forklift trucks

Abstract

In the past years, forklift manufacturers have started to hybridise their products under the worldwide interest toward electrification. This is generally made starting from existing standard products, and converting them into hybrid versions, rather than start from scratch and designing fully new vehicles. This approach involves several gaps from the inaccurate evaluation of the powertrain architecture and relative energy management strategy, up to a rough sizing of components. Therefore, this study suggests a structured methodology to follow, aimed to properly design hybrid forklift trucks. The first step is the analysis of the conventional working machine to hybridise, identifying one set of duty cycles. Then, the design of the new powertrain architecture, with a proper energy management strategy, and the definition of a numerical simulation model realised through a multiphysics object-oriented software package, to properly size the new powertrain components, and to verify energy and power flows. Finally, it is also presented a brief-cost–benefit analysis, as last verification of the proposed methodology, to verify the cost-effectiveness to bring the new products to the market. Results have shown the general feasibility of the operation since the significant reduction in fuel consumption is combined with sustainable costs of the new electrified components.