Electrification of a foldable snowplow : Replacement of a hydraulic system

Sammanfattning: The aim and goal with this report is to investigate the possibility to replace a hydraulic cylinder system on a foldable snowplow with an electric alternative. More environmentally friendly and non-hydraulic solutions have increased in demand over the years, even in applications for large and heavy machines. Holms Industry in Motala aim to produce a foldable snowplow which only uses electric components, so the aim of the thesis is to design a system that can replace a hydraulic cylinder system and to identify and explain any challenges with the process. The process follows a typical product design process that starts with analyzing the current snowplow, gathering and identifying customer requirements. This is followed up by generating ideas and concepts based on the ideas and requirements, detailed design of the most promising concept. Lastly FEM, life cycle and cost analysis are performed to investigate and verify the properties of the final concept. The final concept that was developed consists of an electric linear actuator that provides the required linear movement to move the snowplow blades and an external shock absorption system which utilizes a set of small and large dye springs to absorb the shock loads applied to the snowplow when it hits hidden object in the snow while clearing snow. The conclusions of the project is that the developed final concept is considered to prove that it is possible to replace the hydraulic system with a fully electric system and it also highlights the main challenges with developing such a system, where the main challenge was to develop an external mechanical shock absorption system. The external shock absorption system has some limitations, such as stroke length and load capacity, and the linear actuator requires some improvements, such as higher stroke speed to be viable for implementation on the snowplow. Lastly it is suggested for future work to first perform a field study to gather real data about shock loads as it is very hard to calculate such loads and lastly to focus on creating a linear actuator with an integrated shock absorbing system inside the actuator itself. This would allow for a properly dimensioned, smaller, lighter and in general more efficient product.