Development of a simulation model of a backhoe excavator
Date
2011-09-29
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ORCID
Type
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
The recent pattern of record-high fuel prices has motivated a trend towards reducing the fuel consumption of today’s equipment, while still maintaining the capability and performance offered in previous models. One opportunity to improve fuel economy that has been relatively unexplored in the literature is to understand the effect an operator has on a machine’s efficiency for a given task. Understanding the relationship between an operator’s skill level and the machine’s response poses new opportunities to improve the fuel consumption of a given piece of equipment.
The focus of this thesis is to lay the framework for future studies to investigate the operator’s effect on a machine. As a first step in this project, a simulation model of a John Deere 410G backhoe is developed to be used as a future tool in incorporating and reproducing the effects of various operator skill levels and techniques on a machine. The simulation model contains three main sub-models, namely: the kinematics to recreate the motion of the system, the kinetics to predict the loads experienced by the system, and the hydraulics to drive the motion of the system. The simulation model was developed in the MATLAB Simulink environment, and allowed for both computer coding and object-oriented modeling to be used in a single package.
The results from the simulation model were examined and compared to data collected from the John Deere 410G backhoe. The comparison shows that the simulation and experimental data correlate very well during steady-state actuator extensions, but future work is required to improve the simulation dynamics, and steady-state results predicted as the hydraulic actuators travel in the retraction direction.
Description
Keywords
Hydraulic, Fluid Power, Simulation, Model, Backhoe, Loader, Kinematics, Kinetics
Citation
Degree
Master of Science (M.Sc.)
Department
Mechanical Engineering
Program
Mechanical Engineering