The purpose of this thesis is to, on Volvo Truck’s account, look at a new concept for the construction ingress used on construction vehicles which have a higher ground clearance than ordinary trucks.
The high ground clearance makes it hard for the driver to reach the first instep and therefore a construction ingress is assembled below the stationary insteps. It is designed in a way that avoids damage if colliding with objects.
The present construction ingress used is too expensive, too complex and a bit unsteady to climb on. There is also a new construction vehicle being developed and the old ingress might not fit the new truck.
The concept generation is carried out using systematic concept development. There are many demands and requests for the ingress and these are summarized in a design criterion list. All wished-for properties can not be fulfilled for the simplest ingress designs since they conflict with each other, for example flexibility and stability.
The concepts that are generated are evaluated and selected through different matrices until one concept is found to be the most promising. Different designs of this concept are discussed and one is chosen as the most suitable. The chosen concept design is already used by at least two competitors and that confirms its suitability.
The detailed design presented is only a suggestion for a new construction ingress. Before manufacturing the design needs to be analysed more accurately and the strength, material and cost need to be optimized. The analyses made in the project only show that the design is realistic and that it is worth further work. The final design is promising since it is stable to use, consists of only a few simple parts and will be cheap to manufacture.
Source: Linköping University
Author: Olsson, Sofia
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