• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.153-160
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• 2016

Purpose: This study was conducted to experimentally investigate the structural safety of and identify critical locations in a front-end loader under impact loads. Methods: Impact and static tests were conducted on a commonly used front-end loader mounted on a tractor. In the impact test, the bucket of the front-end loader with maximum live load was raised to its maximum lift height and was allowed to free fall to a height of 500 mm above the ground where it was stopped abruptly. For the static test, the bucket with maximum live load was raised and held at the maximum lift height, median height, and a height of 500 mm from the ground. Strain gages were attached at twenty-three main locations on the front-end loader, and the maximum stresses and strains were measured during respective impact and static tests. Results: Stresses and strains at the same location on the loader were higher in the impact test than in the static test, for most of measurement locations. This indicated that the front-end loader was put under a severe environment during impact loading. The safety factors for stresses were higher than 1.0 at all locations during impact and static tests. Conclusions: Since the lowest safety factor was higher than 1.0, the front-end loader was considered as structurally safe under impact loads. However, caution must be exercised at the locations having relatively low safety factors because failure may occur at these locations under high impact loads. These important design locations were identified to be the bucket link elements and the connection elements between the tractor frame and front-end loader. A robust design is required for these elements because of their high failure probability caused by excessive impact stress.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.109-119
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the structural safety of the front-end loader for the 90 kW class of agricultural tractors in impact test conditions. Deformation and stress on the loader under the impact test conditions are analyzed using the commercial finite element analysis software ANSYS. In previous research dealing with the initial design of the loader, the maximum stress occurred in the mount and exceeded the yield strength of the material. In this paper, an improved design of the mount of the loader was proposed to reduce the stress concentration in the initial design. The safety of the improved design was verified by performing rigid-body dynamics analysis, transient structural analysis, and static structural analysis under three impact test conditions: a drop and catch test, a corner pull test, a corner push test. It was found that the local stress concentration in the mount that appeared in the initial design was greatly reduced in the improved design, and that the maximum stresses occurred in the three impact test conditions are smaller than the yield strength. It is expected that the design improvement of the mount proposed in this study and the method of analysis may be effectively used to enhance structural safety in the development of new model front loaders in the future.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Manufacturing Process Engineers
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.26-32
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• 2019

This study was conducted to analyze the stresses by impact loads on front-end loaders attached to tractors using flexible multi-body dynamics. The model was designed and validated by comparing previous experimental data with the simulation data obtained in this study. Nine sets of conditions were designed using three weights (500, 300, and 100 kg) loaded inside a bucket and three heights (1700, 1350, and 1000 mm) of the bucket from ground level. A parametric study was carried out at five locations for two types of parts of a front-end loader. All the safety factors for the five locations under all conditions were calculated and were greater than 1. Thus, the designs of the front-end loaders were structurally safe. Based on this study, front-end loaders attached to tractors can be designed effectively in terms of cost and safety.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.1332-1340
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• 2009

The front end wheel loader is widely used for the loading of materials in mining and construction fields. It has repetitive digging, loading and dumping procedures. The bucket is subjected to large resistance force from the soil during scooping. We considered the soil reaction force characteristics from scooping procedure, the protection by overload and automatic scooping mode algorithm. The main topic of this paper is the analysis of the soil reaction force characteristics. The analysis of soil mechanics is carried out and the developed soil model is verified by experimental results from the simplified experimental equipment. A simplified model of the soil shape and bucket trajectory is used to determine the scooping direction based on an estimation of the resistance force applied on the bucket during the scooping motion. In the future, this model will be used for the generation of an appropriate path for the wheel loader automation.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.60-70
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• 2015

A front-end loader (FEL) mounted on an agricultural tractor is one of the most commonly used implements for farm work. However, when the tractor carries material using the bucket attached to the FEL on a sloping ground, the materials can spill or roll back over the operator due to the tilted body, thereby requiring the bucket surface to remain level at a constant value regardless of varying slopes. In this study, an active system for controlling the angle of the FEL bucket on a tractor based on the real-time measurement of ground slopes was developed to enable the bucket to constantly remain level. A FEL simulator operated based on an electro hydraulic proportional valve (EHPV) was constructed in the laboratory to develop a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller forming a virtual electronic control unit (ECU) on the computer, which could automatically adjust the bucket angles depending on varying input angles while sending SAE-J1939 associated messages via CAN BUS to the EHPV. The different parameter values for the PID controller due to the gravity effect of the bucket were determined using a manual PID tuning method while assuming that the tractor travels on either an ascending slope or a descending slope. The developed PID control-based self-leveling system showed a mean of steady-state errors of within $1^{\circ}$ and a mean of delayed times of ~ 0.8s when the step input of $+20^{\circ}$ was given, implying that the developed system and control algorithm would be effective in maintaining the bucket angle at a certain value. Future studies include the improvement of the control algorithm to reduce such a time delay as well as the application of the developed algorithm to the FEL mounted on a tractor tested at a testing ground.

• Journal of Drive and Control
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.10-18
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• 2016

A front-end loader (FEL) mounted on an agricultural tractor is one of the most commonly used implements to mechanize routine agricultural tasks. When the FEL is used with a loaded bucket, careful operation is required to maintain safety and avoid spillage when the tractor passes a bump because a change in the gravity center of the tractor due to varied loadings can affect the stability of the tractor. Use of a boom suspension system consisting of accumulators and orifice dampers can be instrumental in reducing pitching vibrations while increasing the handling performance of the FEL-mounted tractor. The objective of this research was to reduce bump shocks by adding an orifice and a flow control valve to the original hydraulic circuit composed solely of accumulators. A simulation study was performed using the SimulationX program to investigate the effects of an accumulator and an orifice-throttle damper on bump shocks. Results showed that the peak pressure on a boom cylinder and the vertical acceleration of a bucket were significantly affected by use of both an accumulator and an orifice damper. In a field test conducted with a 75-kW tractor, the peak pressure of the boom cylinder, and the root mean square (RMS) vertical acceleration of the bucket and seat were reduced by on average, 23.0, 42.2, and 44.9% respectively, as compared to those measured with the original accumulator system, showing that an improved design for the accumulator hydraulic circuit can reduce bump shocks. Further studies are needed to design a tractor suspension system that includes the effects of cabin suspension and tires as well as dynamic analysis.

• The Transactions of the Korea Information Processing Society
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.603-610
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• 1995

In this paper, we present a highly efficient simulation package which supports simulation from functional level to gate level. The package consists of a set of front-end tools, a logic simulator, named HSIM(Highly efficient logic SIMulator), and an waveform analyzer. The front-end tools include a netlist compiler, functional primitive compiler and behavioral compiler. Key feature of developed simulator is that the compiled behavioral models written in C language are directly executed in the simulation engine using incremental loader. By doing so, we achieved significant speed up as compared with the interpretive functional simulator. Experimental results show that HSIM runs about 55% faster than traditional unit-delay event-driven interpretive simulator.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.346-352
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• 2010

This paper presents an intuitive interface scheme for controlling a hydraulic backhoe, which is a piece of excavating equipment consisting of a digging bucket on the end of a two-part articulated arm, and typically mounted and rotated on the back of a tractor or front loader. The passive levers/joysticks for actuator operations of a hydraulic backhoe are replaced into electric joysticks with a robotic controller, which will generate the end-effecter command trajectories of the backhoe through joystick rate control in cylindrical coordinate. The developed backhoe with the hydraulic control system showed the maxim position error of 3 cm with intuitive coordinate operations, which would be helpful for conveniently performing various excavating tasks with natural and effective ways.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2014.04a
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• pp.121-121
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• 2014

본 연구에서는 반도체 제조의 Diffusion 공정설비의 FFU (Fan Filter Unit) 진동에 의해 발생한 wafer 불량 현상을 규명 및 개선하였다. EFEM(Equipment Front End Module)의 Loading 부에 장착된 FOUP(Front Opening Unified Pod)에 들어 있는 Wafer 들이 설비 EFEM 하부로 떨어져 깨지거나 FOUP 내에서 겹침 현상이 발생하는 것을 확인하였다. 이에 생산현장의 모든 Diffusion 공정 설비를 조사하였으며, 그 결과 A 사(社)의 특정 설비에서만 발생되는 현상임을 확인하였다. 해당 A사(社)설비군에서만 월 평균 10 건의 Slot Mapping Error 가 발생하였으며, 이로 인해 Wafer가 재 제조된 매수가 월 평균 53 매로 확인되었다. 따라서 본 연구는 A 사(社)설비에서 발생하는 Mapping Error 의 원인 규명 및 개선을 위해 추진되었다. 총 12 개의 항목을 불량 발생 원인 후보 군으로 선정 후 예비 진단한 결과 FFU(Fan Filter Unit)에 의한 문제 발생 가능성이 가장 높을 것으로 추정되었다. 이에 따라 4 개의 서로 다른 물리적 환경/조건에서 진동을 측정하였으며, 최종 평가 결과 Motor 와 Blade 의 불균형에서 기인한 진동이 설비의 loader 부에 직접적으로 영향을 주는 것을 확인하였다. 진동 문제를 해결하기 위해 고 RPM blade 에서 저 RPM 및 유량 감소를 보완할 수 있는 신규모델로 교체하였다. 신규 Module(blade/motor) 장착 후 Load port 에서의 진동 측정 결과 개선 전 대비 91% 감소하였으며, 결과적으로 Slot mapping error 발생 건수가 50% 이상 감소되는 효과와 Wafer 재 제조 매수도 월 평균 약 43% 감소하는 효과를 얻을 수 있었다.