Analysis of dropbox assisted hydraulic traction

Sammanfattning: The research looks at the advantages and disadvantages of a hydraulic auxiliary drive (HAD) system which is installed on a 25 meter long timber transport vehicle. The purpose is to investigate the performance with regard to energy, economy and environment of the system due to the added components, the hydraulic accumulators. The auxiliary system that is used on the vehicle is simply a hydrostatic transmission system. Ideally, the fuel consumption and cost can be reduced by using accumulators. To verify this hypothesis, model-based simulations were performed in a software environment and the result was analyzed for a linear and repeatedly accelerating and decelerating driving cycle. Additionally, comparisons were made between the HAD system with and without the assistance of accumulators. From the simulation results, the system assisted by accumulators consumes approximately 14% less fuel than the other. And it produces 15% more tractive effort when the vehicle is accelerating. The paper also includes the determination of the size of accumulators, both theoretically and with simulations. By comparison, there is a small difference between the results from the theoretical calculation and the simulations, which might be caused by a neglecting the volumetric losses in the simulation process. Ideally, an accumulator with a size of 57 L was found to be the most efficient size for the studied driving cycle. Beyond that speed, the efficiency will decrease to some extent. Physical tests are not presented in this paper, but they will be done in the future.