Design Of Roll Over And Falling Object Protective Structure Of Cabin Of An Excavator

Abstract

All mobile machinery is at the risk of rolling over, depending on the machine characteristics, working environment and terrain. The need to protect the operator from the risk of being injured or causing death due to a roll over has been of prime importance in the design and development of all machinery. Although the development of standards has been outpaced by the evolution of the machines, countries world over have set standards addressing the safety of the operators which these machines need to conform to. This project deals with the how the rollover occurs for the vehicle and finding out the parameters affecting for the vehicle rollover. The main objective of this project is to find out whether the cabin of an excavator satisfied the ISO-3471 or not. ISO- 3471 is for rollover protective structure. Roll over Protective Structure, by definition, is a frame or a cab like structure surrounding the seat-belted operator with a hard hat, strong enough to absorb the impact energy in case of roll over of the vehicle. For this purpose Impact analysis of cabin with the help of finite element analysis tools like Hypermesh 8.0, ABAQUS 6.5.1, ANSYS 10, LS Dyna is done. And finally the conclusion has been drawn that this particular design for ROPS satisfied the ISO 3471:1994 standards for Excavator. Moreover to find out the alternative of steel a simple FE model of cabin has been made which is being analyzed for composite material. Moreover the cabin has also to confirmed to ISO-3449.ISO-3449 is for falling object protective structure. Falling Object Protective Structure is a structure which protects a seat-belted operator with a hard hat, from falling objects like rocks, tools, tree branches etc. After the analysis it is concluded that cab model also satisfied the acceptance criteria as laid down by ISO-3449.